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It was a procession
of dainty shapes wreathing themselves into gracious attitudes;
mounting--ever mounting. As he beheld their filmy draperies that swayed
phantom-like among the crags overhead, he understood those pagan minds
of olden days for whom such wavering exhalations were none other than
sea-nymphs, Atlantides, offspring of some mild-eyed god of Ocean rising
to greet their playfellows, the Oreads, on the hills.
The wildest stretch of Nepenthe coast-line lay before him. Its profile
suggested not so much the operation of terrestrial forces as a
convulses and calcined lunar landscape--the handiwork of some demon in
delirium. Gazing landwards, nothing met his eye save jagged precipices
of fearful height, tormented rifts and gulleys scorched by fires of old
into fantastic shapes, and descending confusedly to where the water
slept in monster-haunted caverns.
Not a sign of humanity was visible save one white villa, far away. It
was perched on a promontory of heliotrope-tinted trachyte; struck by
the morning beams it flashed and glowed like a jewel in the sunshine.


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