The boy bent his body again and retired.
He immediately returned, and informed the officer that his master desired him to enter, and conducted him to a door.
The officer pressed a skull similar to that with which the reader has already been made acquainted; the door flew open, and he stood in a magnificent apartment, with a young man before him.
The apartment into which Lorenzo had entered, was vast and magnificent in its proportions; it was formed of the whole of the after part of the schooner, and of its entire width. It was richly though peculiarly decorated: the sides, unlike the plain wainscoating of ships in general, were made of the richest and most exquisitely polished mahogany, upon which were elaborately carved landscapes, in which nature was represented principally in her most terrible aspect,—with volcanoes belching forth their liquid fires; cataracts eating away in their angry mood the rugged granite, over whose uneven brows they were foamingly precipitated; inhospitable mountains frowning on the solitary waves below, that unheedingly lashed their base; chasms that yawned as terrific as the cataclasm that might be supposed to have formed them, and other subjects which blended the magnificent with the terribly sublime.
The precious metals were freely used to mark the shades and other points in these highly wrought carvings, so that the fire which the volcanoes sent forth was cleverly represented by gold, the water by silver, and so forth.
Large beads of gold surrounded each tableau, and separated it from the next. On the skirting-boards at the lower parts were carved palezotic creatures, that held between their extended jaws large richly bound volumes, which were secured by springs against the rolling of the vessel.
The ceiling was decorated in the same peculiar manner: the two sides of the celestial sphere were distinctly represented, with the signs of the zodiac and the constellations finished in a perfect style, and scrupulously placed at the correct distances from each other.
The furniture was in exact keeping with this rich, though strange style of decoration. Soft and velvetty carpets covered the floor, or rather the deck; fanciful ottomans, made in the shape of gigantic sea shells, covered with crimson velvet, and decorated with pure and solid gold, were placed here and there. Immense globes of the earth and the heavens, mathematical instruments of the largest size were carefully arranged, and so effectually secured in their position, that they could not be affected by the tossing of the schooner. But what was particularly calculated to attract attention among these various things was a gigantic telescope, whose principal parts stood on a magnificent frame. More than ordinary care seemed to be devoted to this instrument, both to its construction and to its preservation, for everything about it was exquisitely made and polished.
The young man who stood before Lorenzo, may have been about twenty-five years of age: he was tall and slender, but infinitely well formed; his limbs were beautifully proportioned and straight, and his hands were almost femininely delicate, notwithstanding the close construction of the bones, and the hard, wiry sinews, which could be barely seen, now and then slightly swelling the skin.