29G The Man of lU-Oincn. _ [Skpt. 



cabin against whose heavy beams I had so often expected to be knocked 

 to pieces ? "Where was the peep of daylight through the little jail-like 

 windows ? My cabin was now wide enough, for it was the skj' ; my 

 mattrass was a layer of sand and shingle ; and my curtain was the broad 

 foliage of an immense cedar, that waved and nodded doAvn to the water's- 

 edge in as hot a blast as ever breathed African fire. The catastrophe was 

 complete. The signora had given me this opportunity of knowing 

 woman and the world. The old captain, tout a fait Franqais, had gal- 

 lantly saved her from the pain of making any apologies to me ; and a few 

 opiate ch-ops administered by her own fair hands, and a stout boat's 

 crew, left me on shore ten miles from the frigate, to watch her ploughing 

 away the azure, and curse, or laugh at, as I might, the perfidy of opera- 

 dancers, and the ])erilous charms of youths of seventy-two ! 



" On what part of the globe I was thrown, w^as beyond all conjecture. 

 Sand, interminable sand — a sky clear as glass, with a sun burning like a 

 red-hot shot in the centre of it — and a level sea, where the frigate was 

 already flying away like a phantom — were all that lay before, behind, or 

 above me. For the first time, I felt an inclination to give up the strug- 

 gle, and find in the bottom of the sea a bed from which I could not be 

 flung by the tricks of opera divinities, the rivalry of inamoratos past their 

 grand climacteric, nor the hands of all the boats' crews of Christendom. 

 I will acknowledge, to my shame, that I suffered this petty accident to 

 >veigh with me ; and, in two minutes more, I might have been among 

 the sharks and lobsters of the IMediterranean, had not a shot, that 

 whistled by my ear, broke the whole chain of my meditations. Half-a- 

 dozen savages, lance and carbine in hand, darting from a thicket, were 

 round me. 



" I expected that this was to be the last day of my adventures^ and, 

 as life was of no use to a man who had nothing to eat, I offered it to them. 

 But they were better judges of tlie value of things than to trouble them- 

 selves with taking it : they took my clothes, stripped me of every claim 

 to an appearance in civilized society, and galloped off, leaving me to 

 make my meal of the sand, and wash it down with the sea-water. I 

 might now have drowned myself at my leisure ; but the fit was gone by. 

 A man is never fitter for a hero than when he has nothing to lose ; and, 

 as I compared the shrivelled wretches that had robbed me, with my own 

 full-shaped and sinewy limbs, I determined to begin by the usual end of 

 heroism, and turn collector of that harvest which one man sows and 

 another man reaps, which asks neither plough nor sickle, and which 

 finds its most arable field in the high road. 



" ]My resolution might be slow, but my execution was rapid. After a 

 day and a night's march, I reached a small forest, where I sheltered 

 myself at once from sight and from sunshine. A little village was at 

 one end of it — an Arab saint's tomb at the other. In the shrine I found 

 a priest, who, instead of saying his prayers, was luxuriously indulging 

 himself on his carpet with coffee and a pipe. The sight was irresistible. 

 I sprang upon him, knocked him down with my naked hand, and, 

 before he could recover the blow or his astonishment, was master of hi* 

 breakfast, his purse, his carpet, and his pipe. Never was IMollah more 

 completely cleared of the temptations of this world ! 



" But I ought to have robbed him of his voice ; for, long before I 

 could wind my way through the thicket, I heard it calling after me in 

 all the names that African tongues ever showered on the head of the 



