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EOTHEN;. OR, TRACES OF TRAVEL’ BROUGHT HOME FROM THE ‘EAST. 11
rank as *‘ Admiral.” WNicolou cut his cable, and
thus, for the time, saved his vessel; for the rest
of the fleet under his command were quickly
wrecked, while ‘‘the Admiral” got away clear to
the open sea. The violence of the squall soon
passed off, but Nicolou felt that his chance of
one day resigning his high duties as an admiral
for the enjoyments of private life on the stead-
fast shore mainly depended upon his success in
working the brig with his own hands; so, after
calling on his namesake, the saint (not for the
first time, I take it), he got up some canvas, and
took the helm. He became equal, he told us, to
a score of Nicolous; and the vessel, as he said,
was ‘“‘manned with his terrors.” For two days,
it seems, he cruised at large; but at last, either
by his seamanship or by the natural instinct of
the Greek mariners for finding land, he brought
his craft close to an unknown shore, which prom-
ised well for his purpose of running in the ves-
sel; and he was preparing to give her a good
berth on the beach, when he saw a gang of fero-
cious-looking fellows coming down to the point
for which he was making. Poor Nicolou was
a perfectly unlettered and untutored genius, and
for that reason, perhaps, a keen listener to tales
of terror. His mind had been impressed with
some horrible legend of cannibalism, and he now
did not doubt for a moment that the men await-
ing him on the beach were the monsters at whom
he had shuddered in the days of his childhood.
The coast on which Nicolou was running his ves-
sel was somewhere, I fancy, at the foot of the
Anzairie Mountains; and the fellows who were
preparing to give him a reception were probably
very rough specimens of humanity, It is likely
enough that they may have given themselves the
trouble of putting ‘‘the Admiral” to death for
the purpose of simplifying their claim to the ves-
sel and preventing litigation; but the notion of
their cannibalism was, of course, utterly unfound-
ed. Nicolou’s terror had, however, so graven the
idea on his mind that he could never afterward
dismiss it. Having once determined the char-
acter of his expectant hosts, ‘¢ the Admiral ” nat-
urally thought that it would be better to keep
their dinner waiting any length of time than to
attend their feast in the character of a roasted
Greek ; so he put about his vessel, and tempted
the deep once more. After a farther cruise, the
lonely commander ran his vessel upon some rocks
at another part of the coast, where she was lost,
with all her treasure; and Nicolou was but too
glad to scramble ashore, though without one dol-
lar in his girdle. These adventures seem flat
enough as I repeat them; but the hero express-
ed his terrors by such odd terms’of speech, and
such strangely humorous gestures, that the story
came from his lips with an unfailing zest; so
that the crew, who had heard the tale so often,
could still enjoy to their hearts the rich fright
of the Admiral, and still shuddered with una-
bated horror when he came to the loss of the
dollars. ° : .
The power of listening to long stories (for
which, by-the-bye, I am giving you large cred-
it) is common, I fancy, to most sailors, and the
Greeks have it to a great degree, for they can
be perfectly patient under a narrative of two or
three hours’ duration. These long stories are
mostly founded upon Oriental topics, and in one
of them I recognized with some alterations an
old friend of the ‘Arabian Nights.” I inquired
as to the’ source from which the story had been
derived, and the crew all agreed that it had been
handed down unwritten from Greek to Greek,
Their account of the matter does not, perhaps,
go very far toward showing the real origin of the
tale, but when I afterward took up the ‘** Arabian
Nights,” I became strongly impressed with a no-
tion that they must have sprung from the brain
of a Greek. It seems to me that these sto-
ries, while they disclose a complete and habitual
knowledge of things Asiatic, have about them so
much of freshness and life, so much of the stir-
ring and volatile European character, that they
cannot have owed their conception to a mere Ori-
ental, who, for creative purposes, is a thing dead
and dry—a mental mummy that may have been
a live king just after the flood, but has since lain
balmed in spice, At the time of the Caliphat
the Greek race was familiar enough to Bagdad ;
they were the merchants, the peddlers, the bar-
bers, and intriguers- general of South - western
Asia, and therefore the Oriental materials with
which the Arabian tales are wrought must have
been completely at the command of the inventive
people to whom I would attribute their origin.
We were nearing the isle of Cyprus, when there
arose half a gale of wind, with a heavy, chop-
ping sea; my Greek seamen considered that the
weather amounted not to a half but to an inte-
gral gale of wind at the very least, so they put
up the helm and scudded for twenty hours: when
we neared the main-land of Anadoli, the gale
ceased, and a favorable breeze sprang up, which
brought us off Cyprus once more. Afterward
the wind changed again, but we were still able to
lay our course by sailing close-hauled.
We were at length in such a position that, by
holding on our course for about halfan hour, we
should get under the lee of the island. and find
ourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been
gradually freshening ; it now blew hard, and
there was a heavy sea running. .
As the grounds for alarm arose, the crew gath-
ered together in one close group; they stood pale
and grim under their hooded capotes, like monks
awaiting a massacre, anxiously looking by turns
along the pathway of the storm, and then upon
each other, and then upon the eye of the captain,
who stood by the helmsman. Presently the Hy-
driot came aft, more moody than ever, the bearer
of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of
the struggle; he received a resolute answer, and
still we held our course. Soon there came a
heavy sea, that caught the bow of the brigantine
as she lay jammed in between’ the waves; she
bowed her head low under the waters, and shud-
dered through all her timbers — then gallantly
stood up again over the striving sea, with bow-
sprit entire. But where were the crew? It was
a crew no longer, but rather a gathering of Greek
citizens ; the shout of the seaman was changed
for the murmuring of the people—the spirit of
the old Demos was alive. ‘The men came aft in
a body, and loudly asked that the vessel should
be put about, and that the storm be no longer
tempted. Now, then, for speeches: the captain,
his eyes flashing fire, his frame all quivering with
emotion—wielding his every limb, like another
and a louder voice, pours forth the eloquent tor-
rent of his threats and his reasons, his commands
and his prayers; he promises —he yows—he
swears that there is safety in holding on—safe-
ty, if Greeks will be brave! The men hear, and
are moved; but the gale rouses itself once more,
and again the raging sea comes trampling over
the timbers that are the life of all. - The fierce
Hydriot advances one step more near to the cap-
tain, and the angry growl of the people goes float-
ing down the wind ; but they listen—they waver
once more, and once more resolve, then waver
again, thus doubtfully hanging between the ter-
rors of the storm and the persuasion of glori-
ous speech, as though it were the Athenian that
talked, and Philip of Macedon that thundered
on the weather bow.
Brave thoughts, winged on Grecian words,
gained their natural mastery over terror; the brig-
antine held on her course, and reached smooth
water at last. I landed at Limesol, the western-
most port of Cyprus, leaving the vessel to sail for
Larnecca, where she was to remain for some
ays.
Qe
CHAPTER VII.
CYPRUS.
Tere was a Greek at Limesol who hoisted
his flag as an English vice-consul, and he insist-
ed upon my accepting his hospitality, With
some difficulty, and chiefly by assuring him that
I could not delay my departure beyond an early
hour in the afternoon, I induced him to allow
my dining with his family, instead of banquet-
ing all alone with the representative of my sov-
ereign in consular state and dignity. The lady
of the house, it seemed, had never sat at table
with a European. She was very shy about the
matter, and tried hard to get out of the scrape;
but the husband, I fancy, reminded her that she
was theoretically an Englishwoman, by virtue
of the flag which waved over her roof, and that
she was bound to show her nationality by sitting
at meat with me. Finding herself inexorably
condemned to bear with the dreaded gaze of
European eyes, she tried to save her innocent
children from the hard fate which awaited her-
self; but I obtained that all of them (and I think
there were four or five) should sit at the table.
You will meet with abundance of stately recep-
tions, and of generous hospitality too, in the
East; but rarely, very rarely, in those regions
(or even, so far as I know, in any part of South-
ern’ Europe) does one gain an opportunity of
seeing the familiar and in-door life of the peo-
s
le.
This family party of the good consul's (or,
rather, of mine, for I originated the idea, though
he furnished the materials) went off very well.
The mamma was shy at first; but she veiled the
awkwardness which she felt by affecting to scold
her children, who had all of them, I think, im-
mortal names—names, too, which they owed to
tradition, and certainly not to any classical en-
thusiasm of their parents. Every instant I was
delighted by some such phrases as these: ‘‘ The-
mistocles, my love, don’t fight!”—** Alcibiades,
can’t you sit still?”—‘‘Socrates, put down the
cup!”—‘‘Oh, fie! Aspasia; don’t, oh, don’t be
naughty!” It is true that the names were pro-
nounced Socrahtie, Aspahsie—that is, according
to accent, and not according to quantity; but I
suppose it is scarcely now to be doubted that
they were so sounded in ancient times.
To me it seems that, of all the lands I know
(you will see, in a minute, how I connect this
piece of prose with the isle of Cyprus), there is
none in which mere wealth, mere unaided wealth,
is held half so cheaply—none in which a poor
devil of a millionnaire, without birth or ability,
occupies so humble a place—as in England.
My Greek host and I were sitting together, I
think, upon the roof of the house (for that is the
lounging-place in Eastern climes), when the for-
mer assumed a scrious air, and intimated a wish
to converse upon the subject of the British Con-
stitution, with which he assured me that he was
thoroughly acquainted; he presently, however,
informed me that there was one anomalous cir-
cumstance attendant upon the practical working
of our political system which he had never been
able to hear explained in a manner satisfactory
to himself. . From the fact of his having found
a difficulty in his subject, I began to think that
my host might really know rather more of it
than his announcement of a thorough knowledge
had Jed me to expect. I felt interested at be-
ing about to hear from the lips of an intelligent
Greek, quite remote from the influence of Euro-
pean opinions, what might seem to him the most
astonishing and incomprehensible of all those re-
sults which have followed from the action of our
political institutions, _ The anomaly —the only
anomaly which had been detected by the vice-
consular wisdom —consisted in‘ the fact that
Rothschild, the late money-monger, had never
been the Prime-minister of England! I gravely
tried to throw some light upon the mysterious
causes which had kept the worthy Israelite out of
the cabinet, but I think I could sce that my expla-
nation was not satisfactory, Go and argue with
the flies of summer that there is a Power divine
yet greater than the sun in the heavens, but nev-
er dare hope to convince the people of the South
that there is any other god than gold.
My intended joumey was to the site of the
Paphian Temple. I take no antiquarian interest
in ruins, and care little about them, unless they
are cither striking in themselves, or else serve to
mark some spot on which my fyncy loves to
dwell. I knew that the ruins of Paphos were
scarcely, if at all, discernible; but there was a
will, and a longing more imperious than mere
curiosity, that drove me thither.
For this, just then, was my pagan soul's desire
—that (not forfeiting my Christian’s inheritance
for the life to come) it were yet given me to live
through this world —to live, a favored mortal,
under the old Olympian dispensation; to speak
out my resolves to the Kxfening Jove, and hear
him answer with approving thunder ; to be bless-