VOYAGE AND ARRIVAL 23 



shirt, and trousers tucked high up his brown thighs, 

 stood in the water brandishing a wide-mouthed net, 

 and out in the Gulf, beyond a httle fleet of pehcans 

 looking Hke play ships riding at anchor, silvery 

 mackerel, with fins gleaming in the slanting rays of 

 the evening sun, raced in frenzied terror before a 

 shoal of porpoises, whose speed and twists and turns 

 churned the sea to a tossing line of foam. Gulls, 

 with hanging feet, watchful of the crumbs that fell 

 from the rich man's table, poised low to the water, 

 with alert heads turning slowly from side to side, in- 

 sidiously intent. 



The next afternoon saw us off the Golden Horn. 

 Constantinople at sunset ! It comes as near to the 

 city of our dreams as reality can do. The shadowy 

 parterre which divides us from the dim land of Faery 

 is lifted here, and the lariat of imagination curls 

 about the marble palaces and golden-domed mosques, 

 touching, as with a magician's wand, the snowy 

 minarets and towering pinnacles. In that magnificent 

 structure, that swarthy sentinel amid a white army, 

 with vast domes of black porphyry and gleaming 

 cupolas of beaten gold, a Scheherezade might melt 

 the heart of a Sultan with her tales. 



I should have peopled the city but for Kenneth's 

 mundanity. He broke the magic spell rudely, 

 roughly. 



" Ripping ! " he said, " I call it simply ripping ! " 



I had gathered the world-old materials Thoreau 

 told us of to make me a path to the stars, and they 

 were used to build a wood-shed ! 



