skilled with Chinese junks than with western ships, went with it as
gentleman commander of a galley. The result of the encounter was a
shattering victory for the Genoese off Curzola. Sixty-eight Venetian
galleys were burnt, and seven thousand prisoners were haled off to
Genoa, among them Marco Polo, who had now a taste of the results of that
enterprise, manliness, and warfare, whose absence he so deprecated in
the men of Suchow.

But soon there began to run through the streets and courtyards of Genoa
a rumour that in prison there lay a certain Venetian captain, with tales
so wonderful to beguile the passing hours that none could tire of
hearing them; and anon the gallants and sages and the bold ladies of
Genoa were flocking, just as the men of the Rialto had flocked before,
to hear his stories of Kublai Khan.

Lord of the fruits of Tartary
Her rivers silver-pale,
Lord of the hills of Tartary,
Glen, thicket, wood, and dale,
Her flashing stars, her scented breeze,
Her trembling lakes, like foamless seas,
Her bird-delighting citron-trees
In every purple vale.

'Messer Marco,' so runs Ramusio's account of the tradition which
lingered in Venice in his day, 'finding himself in this position, and
witnessing the general eagerness to hear all about Cathay and the Great
Khan, which indeed compelled him daily to repeat his story till he was
weary, was advised to put the matter in writing, so he found means to
get a letter written to his father in Venice, in which he desired the