the nature of a call. But it was difficult to state intelligibly
the grounds of this belief to that man of rigorous logic, if of
infinite charity.

The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the wily
Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the evoker
of bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of my own
obscure Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should unroll
its wonders and terrors beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The
disdainful ocean did not open wide to swallow up my audacity,
though the ship, the ridiculous and ancient galere of my folly, the
old, weary, disenchanted sugar-waggon, seemed extremely disposed to
open out and swallow up as much salt water as she could hold.
This, if less grandiose, would have been as final a catastrophe.

But no catastrophe occurred. I lived to watch on a strange shore a
black and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train of attendant
maidens, carrying baskets of linen to a clear stream overhung by
the heads of slender palm-trees. The vivid colours of their draped
raiment and the gold of their earrings invested with a barbaric and
regal magnificence their figures, stepping out freely in a shower
of broken sunshine. The whiteness of their teeth was still more
dazzling than the splendour of jewels at their ears. The shaded
side of the ravine gleamed with their smiles. They were as
unabashed as so many princesses, but, alas! not one of them was the
daughter of a jet-black sovereign. Such was my abominable luck in
being born by the mere hair's breadth of twenty-five centuries too
late into a world where kings have been growing scarce with
scandalous rapidity, while the few who remain have adopted the
uninteresting manners and customs of simple millionaires.