orange, scarlet, mauve and purple.

Hawk was the only man I discovered in all those hundreds of apparently
commonplace souls who could really appreciate and never tire of
watching and discussing these things.

I had often heard of the blue of the Mediterranean. But I must confess
that I rather thought it had been exaggerated by authors, artists and
poets as a fruitful and beautiful source of inspiration.

I never saw such blues before: electric-blue and deep, seething navy
blue, flecked with foam and silver spray; calm lapis-lazuli blue; a
sort of greeny, mummy-case blue; flashing, silk-shot blue, like a
kingfisher's feathers. Sometimes the sea was as calm as a mill-pond,
and you could see down and down and down.

There is a certain milky look in the waters of the Mediterranean which
I never saw anywhere else. What it is I do not know, but it hangs in
the water like a cloud. Once there was a shoal of porpoises playing
round us, and they curled and dived and flopped in the warm blue seas.

At night Hawk and I stood for hours watching first one constellation
"light up," and then another, till the whole purple-velvet of the
Mediterranean night sky was pinholed with the old familiar star-
designs.

It struck me as most extraordinary, and almost uncanny, to see the
same old stars we knew in England, still above us, so many hundred
miles from home.