I did not, however:  but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan, intending to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily, if I found there a suitable motor for travelling, for I had not been at the pains to take the motor on board at Imbros; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern Italy.  But when I came thereabouts, I was confronted with an awful horror:  for no southern Italy was there, and no Sicily was there, unless a small new island, probably not five miles long, was Sicily; and nothing else I saw, save the still-smoking crater of Stromboli.  I cruised northward, searching for land, and for a long time would not believe the evidence of the instruments, thinking that they wilfully misled me, or I stark mad.  But no:  no Italy was there, till I came to the latitude of Naples, it, too, having disappeared, engulfed, engulfed, all that stretch.  From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock and mood of awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled:  for it was, and is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the earth’s surface is being purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how shall I be found?

However, I went on my way, but more leisurely, not daring for a long time to do anything, lest I might offend anyone; and, in this foolish cowering mind, coasted all the western coast of Spain and France during five weeks, in that prolonged intensity of calm weather which now alternates with storms that transcend all thought, till I came again to Calais:  and there, for the first time, landed.

Here I would no longer contain myself, but burned; and that magnificent stretch of forest that lay between Agincourt and Abbeville, covering five square miles, I burned; and Abbeville I burned; and Amiens I burned; and three forests between Amiens and Paris I burned; and Paris I burned; burning and burning during four months, leaving behind me smoking districts, a long tract of ravage, like some being of the Pit that blights where pass his flaming wings.

* * * * *

This of city-burning has now become a habit with me more enchaining—­and infinitely more debased—­than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol to the drunkard.  I count it among the prime necessaries of my life:  it is my brandy, my bacchanal, my secret sin.  I have burned Calcutta, Pekin, and San Francisco.  In spite of the restraining influence of this palace, I have burned and burned.  I have burned two hundred cities and countrysides.  Like Leviathan disporting himself in the sea, so I have rioted in this earth.

* * * * *

After an absence of six months, I returned to Imbros:  for I was for looking again upon the work which I had done, that I might mock myself for all that unkingly grovelling:  and when I saw it, standing there as I had left it, frustrate and forlorn, and waiting its maker’s hand, some pity and instinct to build took me—­for something of God was in Man—­and I fell upon my knees, and spread my arms to God, and was converted, promising to finish the palace, with prayers that as I built so He would build my soul, and save the last man from the enemy.  And I set to work that day to list-rub the last few dalles of the jet.