* * * * *

I did not leave Imbros after that during four years, except for occasional brief trips to the coast—­to Kilid-Bahr, Gallipoli, Lapsaki, Gamos, Rodosto, Erdek, Erekli, or even once to Constantinople and Scutari—­if I happened to want anything, or if I was tired of work:  but without once doing the least harm to anything, but containing my humours, and fearing my Maker.  And full of peaceful charm were those little cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is rather like a light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun real earth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would I return to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmounted temptation, and lived tame and stainless.

I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and the platform-top was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternate two-foot squares of pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed one morning that the Speranza’s bottom was really now too foul, and the whim took me then and there to leave all, and clean her as far as I could.  I at once went on board, descended to the hold, took off my sudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast over to starboard, so as to tilt up her port bottom to the scraper.  This was wearying labour, and about noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost darkness, when something seemed to whisper to me these words:  ’You dreamed last night that there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin.’ Horridly I started:  I had dreamed something of the sort, but, from the moment of waking, till then, had forgotten it:  and I leapt livid to my feet.

I cleaned no Speranza that day, nor for four days did I anything, but sat on the cabin-house and mused, my supporting palm among the hairy draperies of my chin:  for the thought of such a thing, if it could by any possibility be true, was detestable as death to me, changing the colour of the sun, and the whole aspect of the world:  and anon, at the outrage of that thing, my brow would flush with wrath, and my eyes blaze:  till, on the fourth afternoon, I said to myself:  ’That old Chinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I think, or blown to the clouds!’

So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to build itself.  For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some young lime-twigs in boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I set out for a long voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, and visiting Bombay, where I was three weeks, and then destroyed it.

* * * * *

I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not like to leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of finding anything so suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraid to abandon my petrol motor, which I had taken on board with the air-windlass, since I was going to uncivilised land.  I therefore coasted down western Hindustan.