“Terious!” the Captain shouted. “Set the mains’l and the lower fores’ls! Let’s punch through this murk before our herdsman’s flock grows bored and decides to sink back from whence they came.” Her classic profile was aglow with light from the thousands of luminescent deep-sea dwellers that had gathered around the ship.
Simna had not left his position by the rail. “Better to worry not about losing their interest, but about my friend losing the strength in his arm.”
It was a procession never to be forgotten by all who saw it: the graceful Grömsketter, sails set and making her way southwest, englobed by millions of colored lights worn by as fantastic a profusion of undersea life as could be assembled in one place. Even experienced seamen would have been paralyzed by all that beauty, had they not been so busy. Stanager Rose kept her crew occupied lest they lose themselves in the embarrassment of natural magnificence.
Thrust back by the luminescence, the fog began to shrivel and disperse, until a single light brighter if not more beautiful than all those assembled began to illuminate the scene from above. Then even the blue intensity of the sword could not sustain the interest of the visitors from the deep. In their tiny millions and larger pairs and trios they began to sink back into the abyss from which they had risen, untold numbers of lights descending and dissipating, until, with a last silent wave of a phosphorescent scepter, one of the deep-sea mermen saluted the ship and turned his glowing chariot ultimately downward.