skeleton.  In the second starboard berth was a small table, and on the floor a thick round ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me look down; and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curved half-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained.  This I took, and went back to the Speranza:  for that ship was nothing but an emptiness, and a stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now to the rank deep to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into its nature and being, to become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God, shall be nothing but an earth in little.

During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for it was pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be the journal of someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who called himself Albert Tissu, and the ship the Marie Meyer.  There was nothing remarkable in the narrative that I could see—­common-place descriptions of South Sea scenes, records of weather, cargoes, and the like—­till I came to the last written page:  and that was remarkable enough.  It was dated the 13th of April—­strange thing, my good God, incredibly strange—­that same day, twenty long years ago, when I reached the Pole; and the writing on that page was quite different from the neat look of the rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he heads it ’Cinq Heures,’—­I suppose in the evening, for he does not say:  and he writes:  ’Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses of which must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, an event which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I was justified in undertaking this most eventful voyage.  Talking with Captain Tombarel on the poop, when a sudden exclamation from him—­“Mon Dieu!” His visage whitens!  I follow the direction of his gaze to eastward!  I behold! eight kilometres perhaps away—­, ten monstrous waterspouts, reaching up, up, high enough—­all apparently in one straight line, with intervals of nine hundred metres, very regularly placed.  They do not wander, dance, nor waver, as waterspouts do; nor are they at all lily-shaped, like waterspouts:  but ten hewn pillars of water, with uniform diameter from top to bottom, only a little twisted here and there, and, as I divine, fifty metres in girth.  Five, ten, stupendous minutes we look, Captain Tombarel mechanically repeating and repeating under his breath “Mon Dieu!” “Mon Dieu!” the whole crew now on the poop, I agitated, but collected, watch in hand.  And suddenly, all is blotted out:  the pillars of water, doubtless still there, can no more be seen:  for the ocean all about them is steaming, hissing higher than the pillars a dense white vapour, vast in extent, whose venomous sibilation we at this distance can quite distinctly hear.  It is affrighting, it is intolerable! the eyes can hardly bear to watch, the ears to hear! it seems unholy