I want to marry you , he said . we will live for ever in a little house by the sea . I want a big house , I said . I will give it you , he cried . how can one answer such promises ? Innocencio &apos;s words were dreams . we will have some children with fair hair , he went on . it would be lovely if you had some children . at the time I did not know what to say , but have often remembered Innocencio &apos;s dialect version of the song ; palomita blanca reluciente estrella mas chula y mas bella qu&apos;un blanco jasmin - I asked Innocencio about the crater I had seen from the mainland , and the snowy peak I could even now see . yes , he replied , right in the middle of the island is a huge volcano , a real volcano , quite as active as Vesuvius or Stromboli . it is called the bed of Empedocles , and the name is true of this mountain , and of no other . we try to keep its activities hidden ; we do n&apos;t often admit even its existence to anyone from the mainland or even the other islands . when you see a glow in the night sky and ask us what it is , we tell you it &apos;s a fire in the scrub . so it may be , and very likely the olive trees are burning too ; but what has started the conflagration ? we will n&apos;t tell you anything about those seething underground cauldrons that threaten to break through at any moment , and occasionally do so ! what does the pharos say , out there at the end of the jetty ? I asked . it flashes a message all night through , long after every other lamp is out , but not a message of comfort . keep away , it says , I am alight , but so is the mountain ! keep away from these dangerous shores . and from above the inland ranges , I shall be turned into blood , cries the moon ; and the stars wide-eyed with terror sink back into their cavernous abyss . last eruption the mountain burst like a bank and flung millions of pieces of money high into the air . they were scattered over a wide area of the surrounding hills , and were eagerly searched for and gathered up by people from the villages . many a mattress and stocking now bulges with that extraordinary gold . such was the explosive force that a few coins fell even as far away as England . but one never knows what a volcano will do next , so it is best to say nothing about it . Innocencio wandered away , his forehead clouded , as so often his native peak , by the dark legends of his race . in the afternoon I went out again , hoping to see him , but could not find the peaceful garden . I was not far from it , though , for there was sea below me , and I knew that the garden lay near that part of the estate which included a strip of coastline edged with precipitous cliffs . I was looking down on the beach ; was it a festival , that so many people were about ? it must be the day of the sea-sports ; my eyes search the holiday crowd for Innocencio . shall I recognize him in this dazzling light ? there he is ! no , it is someone a little like him . I look in other directions and then suddenly I see him ; he is walking with one of his companions , and talking of the contest to come . he is ready for it , wearing his bathing-slip and bonnet . he does not see me . I am on the cliff-tops of my Uncle &apos;s domain ; it is getting towards evening , the wind has risen but there are no clouds , huge waves are crashing on the rocks below . spectators are gathered on the opposite cliff , cut off from me by a chasm , and waiting for the chief event of the sports . here are townspeople and their visitors , with a few rustics from the mountains inland . all at once a commotion stirs them : Innocencio comes in sight round the headland , pulling a boat with all his strength against the heavy sea . will he ever reach the bay ? time after time a powerful undertow sweeps him outward . then putting forth a supreme effort he rides inshore on the back of a ninth wave and is flung beyond the drag of the out-rushing water . he can not be seen for spray , but a scream of triumph goes up from the watchers . it has never been done before ! someone shouts in excitement , no one else has finished the course . he has pulled all the way from Galva - how many miles ? - and in the teeth of a north-east gale ! Innocencio ! Innocencio ! the cries of the people soar higher than the stormy tumult ; he has put them above Galva of the Grasshoppers , their rival port ; Innocencio is their hero for ever , and even the people of Galva will praise him . I look down into his boat , rocking now in a sheltered inlet ; he has brought from Galva where his sister lives a trophy without price . in the distance and through tears it looks like two little brown dolls , one bigger than the other and lighter in colour ; then I see that they are shoes from the feet of his sister &apos;s children , his elder sister whose name is future and present and past . are they made from walnut-shells and the skin of mouse and mole ? they prove that his boat has been to Galva ; they will always be his greatest treasure . I look now into the heart of Innocencio ; below the proud surf lie images of the perpetual terror of earth and sea ; first the twelve men he saw frozen stiff in the stranded lifeboat ; then more recently the brothers from Lumio drowned in each other&apos;s clasp , the one trying to save the other - dragged from translucent depths , so fast were they locked that no one could separate their last embrace and they were buried in the same grave ; and finally the corpse he had seen half-eaten by worms at the cemetery . his ribs still echo with the horror of their tawny hue . I open my veins to the east I open the veins of my arm with the cut of a sliver of silicon . blood pours out from the left flows out till it reaches the sea goes on flowing pours inexhaustible through the inexhaustible sea without chafe or pause till it surrounds the island a line veining marble a red line in the green sea taut from my arm making a long arm to his home circling the island a ribbon of stain in the foam unmixing like a rusty chain to bind him in binding his home so he never can go nor a boat &apos;s prow cut through a crown renewed without end of mercurial metal from far-away gap whence it flows only his tooth could mend the gap whence it flows only his tongue lick up the stream at its source only his tooth and his tongue . cibation . in the wood of wonder her fountain sings . the magical aphorisms of Eugenius Philalethes . next day I persuaded the anchorite to come walking with me in the same neighbourhood . the coast-scenery was so fine that presently we stopped to look at it , gazing across a bay to the far side where a line of jagged cliffs rose against the horizon . a year or two ago , said the anchorite , a girl and I were walking along this road . there was a spring-tide , gone down very low , as it has to-day ; and as we looked across at that rocky shoal in the distance , we saw the towers and spires of a Gothic cathedral rising above it . the tide had gone out so far that this cathedral , normally submerged , was plainly visible . while the anchorite was speaking I looked out over the expanse of the bay , and could almost behold the faintly-discernible architecture that he described . outlined against the sky , it appeared distinctly to the mind &apos;s eye at least ; and I could imagine that it had taken but little carving of the rocks from which it grew , to turn nature into art . the anchorite did not tell me who the girl was . just where we are , he went on , the coast is so formed that the water can n&apos;t ebb as far as it does from the opposite side of the bay . it &apos;s about dead-low now , and as you can see , there are only two or three hundred yards of sand between the road and the water . well , as I was telling you , we were staring at the cathedral , which is hardly ever uncovered , when a lady stepped out of the sea quite near us . she appeared just where the sand dividing us from the water was narrowest , that is , about opposite where we are now . she was tall and fair and dressed in a robe of yellow silk , the colour between orange and lemon . she came towards us , and we walked over the wet sand to meet her . my eyes had come back from across the bay and were now concentrated upon the waveless touch of the nearer sea and shore . I could all but see the yellow-clad figure standing at the water &apos;s edge ; and it seemed to me that there must have been other of her people - sea-men and sea-women , with her or not far behind , though the anchorite said nothing about them . she spoke to us , he continued ( and I could almost hear the sea-woman &apos;s voice ) , telling us her name was Vellanserga , and inviting us to go with her into the cathedral . I refused ; but the girl went , and was never heard of again . I knew that if the same invitation had been offered to me , I too would have accepted ; and it showed how completely the anchorite &apos;s movements were in subjection to my Uncle &apos;s service , that he had not done so . seeing that I was engrossed in meditation on his tale , the anchorite withdrew . storm is in the air , but distant . does it echo , or threaten ? is the air weighted by the melancholy of a tempest subsiding , or the anxious hush that precedes its first assault ? on the sea floats a head in profile , of heroic traits , a collar of violets encircling the severed neck . the flaxen hair , once looped-up , is now spread upon a watery surface , and tilted by recurring small waves . some distant storm , surely , tore this head from a ship &apos;s prow ; and the wood still bleeds , oozing a purple growth . the salty taste of blood , I mused , comes from the sea , which being without colour , reflects a tint from the air above while turning its red globes into sea-anemones ; but blood has kept these as a dye . here is the end of the land and the beginning of a country under the sea ; an impalpable region stretches over the last of the earth and extends a long way under water . it is said that our starvation is their plenty ; that in time of war here , down there reigns the deepest peace . in a douce air above stones and soil , one is not alone ; mist is blown out towards a silvered horizon , nothing perishes . sometimes there is a thickening , and a growing menace . round coastal rocks flows a true water , the authentic Atlantide . it is not the peacock that divides two continents , shrill-voiced but never terrible ; nor that narrow and more deceptive iris strait ; nor yet the electric blue sweeping from Teneriffe to Tory , though a swish from the tail of the same dragon . under granite the saints lie buried ; here a monument measured to human form still stands , there a tree takes shape from the bones beneath , an honourable vessel . in yet earlier rock there pulses an ancient sensual life , but the saints must be roused up first . their diadems are bright with Sunday flowers , already they lift head and shoulders from their covering slabs . when they come alive and walk their own realm , the kingdom of vegetation , then blood of beasts must warm the older stones and power will wake from a deeper cave . 