I vowed that I was unworthy to pick off the seaweed that adhered to her tail. At the word "tail," she heaved a deep sigh, and, glancing at my lower extremities, burst into a fresh flood of tears. I was unable to account for these weeping fits, to which she seemed subject.
"Some female caprice," thought I; "nothing more."
"What ails thee, my beloved?" I said, tenderly. "Say why, O bewitching enchantress, do those pearl drops continue to pay their tiny tribute to the great ocean?"
"Oh!" she cried to herself, clasping her hands and looking upward, "I feel the sacrifice is too great. It will cost him dearly; but has he not promised?"
"Promised!" I muttered. "What is this sacrifice, I wonder, that she requires of me? What can it be but always to live with her in her own home, under the sea. When once my soul is united with hers," I reasoned, "we shall be one being. I shall be able to live under the water as well as on terra firma. And what have I to make me wish to return to land? I am a widower without family. I've no fortune, in fact, I am all but a ruined man, and I feel anxious to begin a new phase of existence. The sacrifice, after all, is not so great. What does it matter to me where I live, as long as I can bask the livelong day in the sunshine of such beauty?"
I felt that that long ambrosial kiss, the intensity of which had so exhausted my beloved, had imparted to me a new life. I no longer dreaded or believed in the possibility of being drowned. I felt an intense desire to behold the wonders of the deep, and visit those palaces of coral and mother-of-pearl that I had so often heard of, so seizing my beloved by the waist, I exclaimed,
"Come, O joy of my soul; lead me to the hall of thy father. Let us plunge into the turbulent billows. I thirst for thy element. I feel irresistibly drawn down by some new power that has come over me."
"Follow me, then, my beloved," she said, and with one splash disappeared beneath the waves.
To kick away my grog cask and plunge in after her was the work of a moment. I dived down, down, down, till I caught up my charmer, and we both dived together side by side. Down, down, down, deeper, deeper, and deeper, still we dived through forests of seaweed, startling away all sorts of curiously formed fish and sea monsters in our rapid course.
I thought I should never get to the bottom. At length, after long continued diving, I thought I descried gleaming through the waters, the mother-of-pearl roofs and pinnacles of various edifices; nor was I deceived, for as I dived deeper, I could distinguish a great city, built in a wild, weird, grotesque style of architecture, thoroughly new to me, yet grand in design, far above human conception.