and the last words of Arsenius rose again and again to his thoughts.
'Was his call of the spirit or of the flesh?' How should he test
that problem? He wished to seethe world that might be carnal.
True; but, he wished to convert the world .... was not that
spiritual? Was he not going on a noble errand? .... thirsting for
toil, for saintship, for martyrdom itself, if it would but come and
cut the Gordian knot of all temptations, and save him-for he dimly
felt that it would save him--a whole sea of trouble in getting safe
and triumphant out of that world into which he had not yet entered
.... and his heart shrank back from the untried homeless wilderness
before him. But no! the die was cast, and he must down and onward,
whether in obedience to the spirit or the flesh. Oh, for one hour
of the quiet of that dear Laura and the old familiar faces!

At last, a sudden turn of the bank brought him in sight of a
gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and
foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object
in the water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature,
brandishing a harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the
line of a second, the head of which was fixed in the huge purple
sides of a hippopotamus, who foamed and wallowed a few yards down
the stream. An old grizzled warrior at the stern, with a rudder in
either hand, kept the boat's head continually towards the monster,
in spite of its sudden and frantic wheelings; and when it dashed
madly across the stream, some twenty oars flashed through the water
in pursuit. All was activity and excitement; and it was no wonder
if Philammon's curiosity had tempted him to drift down almost
abreast of the barge ere he descried, peeping from under a decorated
awning in the afterpart, some dozen pairs of languishing black eyes,
turned alternately to the game and to himself. The serpents!--