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The figure of a large, pure-white woman, into whose arms their half-delirious fancies pictured them as rushing, was simply a large statue of spotless marble, which stands at the entrance of the bay of Hili-li. The ash-like material which for days had rained upon them and into the ocean around them, was no longer seen.
Hili-li is a kingdom, but its people must, from what I can learn, have as pure and perfect a constitutional liberty as it is possible for mankind to enjoy not liberty as the accident of a royal whim, but such a perfect liberty as the people of England are approaching, and in which by another century they will be able to indulge themselves.
But there was in Hili-li, aside from boating, no allowable means for the gratification of that desire to contend with danger which is inherent in manly youths the world over. Hence these young men were by their very nature compelled to violate laws thus unnatural, and, as generally happens, in doing so they went to extremes.
When found, the poor fellow was not only unconscious, but apparently dead. The arms and legs were frozen through and through, and the entire body was rigid. He was resuscitated, but afterwards lost his hands and feet. In Hili-li persons lost their lives from exposure to cold whose bodies were very little a few of them not at all frozen.
True, it requires from each inhabitant but a few hours of labor in the year to supply all purely physical material wants; but, beginning with the year of the settlement of Hili-li, up to the present time, the wealthiest in the land has performed his share of physical labor quite as conscientiously as has the poorest. Then with them, a man or woman is educated up to the time of death.
Little happenings during our stay at the old sailor's home, which had brought a smile to my own face, had never for a moment altered the countenance of Bainbridge from the stern seriousness becoming that of one who is gathering facts of the most solemn import. I am positive that he would have taken with a poor grace the slightest levity from even myself on the subject of Hili-li.
The old fellow does not really know his age, but I should place it, at the present time, at from seventy-eight to eighty years, which, if correct, would indicate that he was twenty-eight or thirty at the time he was in Hili-li. He must have been as strong generally as three average men, and in the arms as strong as five or six such men.
"The government of Hili-li, by laws and by the encouragement of custom, did much to prevent damage from these storms which, as I have intimated, were a combination of hurricane and snow-storm, with a very sudden and rapid fall of temperature; and when the interval between two of them was not greater than twenty years, the provisions made by the state were ample to prevent loss of life.
This change had occurred twenty-one times in the preceding thousand years; its duration had once been as brief as thirty hours, and at another time had lasted one hundred and twenty hours. The interval between two of its visitations had once been somewhat less than eight years; whilst at the period of Pym and Peters' presence in Hili-li, it had not occurred for eighty-six years and some months.
In ancient Greece a true democrat would have been displeased with the extreme discrepancy between the grandeur of public buildings, and the poverty of private dwellings; but in Hili-li these two bore a perfectly just relationship of elegance, each in its way being perfect. "Yet mere inanimate beauties were the least of all.
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