hills, as Ulster pleasantly considered the Papal States, while Victor Emmanuel, sly Latin that he was, thought little of liberty and much about Rome

Aye, kings!

And so a great nostalgia had come over Shane Campbell on this voyage for the Syrian port and the wife he had married there. He wanted sunshine. He wanted color. He wanted simplicity of life. Killing there was in Syria, great killing, too; but it was the sort of killing one understood and could forgive. A Druse disliked a Maronite Christian, so he went quietly and knifed him. Another Maronite resented that, and killed a Druse; and they were all at it, hellfor-leather. But it was passion and fanaticism, not high-flown words and docile armies, and the tradesmen sneaking up behind war!

Aye,

And he was sick of the damned Mersey fog, and he was sick of the drunkenness of Scotland Road, and he was sick of the sleet lashing Hoylake links. He was sick of pharasaical importers who did the heathen in the eye on Saturday, and on Sunday in their blasted conventicles thumped their black-covered craws in respectable humility In little Asia religion was a passion, not a smug hypocrisy, and though the heathen was dishonest, yet it was not the mathematical, reasoned dishonesty of the Christian; it was a childish game, like horse-coping And in the East they did not blow gin in your face, smelling like turpentine

And he was sick of British women, with their knuckled hands, their splayed feet. Their abominable dressing, too, a bust and a brooch and a hooped skirt; their grocers' conventions, prudish, almost obscene, avoiding of the natural in word, deed, or thought He wanted Fenzile, with her eyes, vert de mer, her full, childish face, her slim hands, with the orange-tinted finger-nails, her silken trousers, her little slippers of silver and blue Her soft arms, her back-thrown head, her closed lids And the fountain twinkling in the soft Syrian night, while afar off some Arab singer chanted a poem of Lyla Khanim's:

And here was Beirut again; here the snowy crest of Lebanon; here the roadstead crowded with craft; here the mulberry-groves. Here the sparkling sapphire sea; here the turf blazing with poppies; here the quiet pine road to Damascus; here the forests, excellent with cedars. Here the twisting, unexpected streets. Here his own quiet house, with the courtyard and its fountain. Here the hum of the bazaars; here the ha-ha of the donkeyboys; here the growling camels. Here the rugs on the wall; here the little orange-trees. Here the two negress servants, clean, efficient. Here color,

And this damned wrestler from Aleppo must go and spoil it all!

84

He might have shipped with one of the great American clippers racing around Cape Good Hope under rolling topsails, and become in his way as well known as Donald McKay was, who built and mastered the Sovereign of the Seas, with her crew of one hundred and five, four mates, and two boatswains. He might have had a ship like Phil Dumaresq's Surprise, that had a big eagle for her figurehead. He might have clipped the record of the Flying Cloud, three hundred and seventy-four miles in one day, steering northward and westward around Cape Horn. He might have had a ship as big as the Great Republic, the biggest ship that ever took the seas. He might have had one of the East Indiamen and the state of an admiral. He might have been one of the new adventurers in steel and steam.

But fame and glory never allured him, and destiny did not call him to be any man's servant. He was content to be his own master with his own ship, and do whatsoever seemed to him good and just to do. If they needed him and his boat anywhere, he would be there. When they needed boats to America, he was there. But if they did n't need him, he was not one to thrust himself. Let Destiny call.

Success, as it was called, was a thing of Destiny. When Destiny needed a man, Destiny tapped him on the shoulder. Failure, however, was a man's own fault. There was always work to do. And it was up to every man

room for him in a higher work, it was no excuse for his not working in a lower plane. There would be no failures, he thought, if folk were only wise. If a man came a cropper in a big way, it was because he had rushed into a work before Destiny, the invisible, infallible nuncio of God, had chosen her man. Or because he was dissatisfied, ambition and ability not being equal. Or because he was lazy.

Always there was work to do, as there was work for him now. Clouds of sail and tubby steamboats went the crowded tracks of the world's waters not to succor and help, but for gain of money. And Lesser Asia was neglected, now that the channel of commerce to the States was opened wide. Syria needed more than sentimental travelers to the Holy Land. It needed machinery for its corn-fields and its mines. It needed prints and muslins from the Lancashire looms. It needed rice and sugar. And it had more to give than a religious education. Fine soap and fruit and wine and oil and sesame it gave, golden tobacco, and beautiful craftsmanship in silver and gold, fine rugs from Persia. Brass and copper and ornamental woodcarving from Damascus, mother of cities; walnuts, wheat, barley, and apricots from its gardens and fields. Wool and cotton, gums and saffron from Aleppo, and fine silk embroidery.

Others might race past Java Head to China for tea and opium. Others make easting around the Horn to the gold-fields of California. Others might sail up the Hooghly to Calicut, trafficking with mysterious Indian men. Others might cross to the hustle and welter of New York, young giant of cities, but Campbell was content to

sail to Asia Minor. He brought them what they needed, and they sent color and rhyme to prosaic Great Britain, hashish to the apothecaries, and pistachios from Aleppo, cambric from Nablus, and linen from Bagdad, and occasionally for an antiquary a Damascene sword that rang like a silver bell.

For others the glory and fame to which Destiny had called them. For others the money that they grubbed with blunted fingers from the dross heaps of commerce. But for Campbell what work he could do, well done-and Lesser Asia

§ 5

Of all the seas he had sailed, it seemed to Shane that the Mediterranean had more color, more life, more romance than any. Not the battles round the Horn, not the swinging runs to China, not the starry Southern seas, had for him the sense of adventure that the Mediterranean had. The Mediterranean was not a sea. It was a home haven, with traditions of the human house. Here Sennacherib sailed in the great galleys the brown Sidonian shipwrights had made for him. Here had been the Phenicians with their brailed squaresails. Here had been the men of Rhodes, sailors and fighters both. Here the Greek penteconters with their sails and rigging of purple and black. Here the Cypirotes had sailed under the lee of the islands Byron loved, and where Sappho sang her songs like wine and honey, sharp wine and golden honey. Here had the Roman galleys plashed, and here the great Venetian boats set proud sail against the Genoese. Here had the Lion Heart sailed gallantly to Palestine.

Here had Icarus fallen in the blue sea. Here had Paul been shipwrecked, sailing on a ship of Adramyttium, bound to the coast of Asia, crossing the sea which is off Cilicia and Pamphylia, and transhipping at Myra. How modern it all sounded but for the strange antique names!

"And when we had sailed slowly many days"- only a seaman could feel the pathos of that-"and scarce were come over against Cnidus, the wind not suffering us, we sailed under Crete, over against Salmone. And, hardly passing it, came unto a place which is called The fair havens-"

Was Paul a sailor, too, Campbell often wondered? The bearded Hebrew, like a firebrand, possibly epileptic, not quite sane, had he at one time been brought up to the sea? "Sirs," he had said, "I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives." There spoke a man who knew the sea, not a timid passenger. But the master of the ship thought otherwise, and yet Paul was right. And then came "a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon." And that was the Levanter of to-day,-Euraquilo, they call it,— hell let loose. Then came furious seas, and the terrors of a lee shore, the frapping of the ship, and the easing overboard of tackle, the jettisoning of freight.

"And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay upon us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away." Somehow the absolute fidelity of the sea-life of the story went to Campbell's heart, and the figure of Paul the mariner was clearer than the figure of Paul the apostle.

"Howbeit, we must be cast upon a certain island.

"But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country-"

The intuition of seamanship, the flash. How modern! Oh, Paul lived in that sea. His ghost and memory were forever there, as were the ghosts of the Lion Heart; and of Sappho, singer of songs; and of the stout Phenician sailing men; and of the doges of Venice, lovers and husbands of the sea. On the tideless Mediterranean beauty still abided as nowhere else; would abide, when nowhere else

Would it, though? Would it abide anywhere? A pang came into Campbell's heart. Off Finisterre he had been passed by Robert Steel of Greenocks Falcon, every sail drawing, skysails and moon-rakers set, a pillar of white cloud she seemed, like some majestic womanhood. And while boats like the Fiery Cross and the Falcon tore along like greyhounds, they were building tubby iron boats to go by steam. The train was beating the post-chaise with its satiny horses, the train that went by coal one dug from the ground. And even now De Lesseps and his men were digging night and day that the steamboat might push the proud clipper from the seas. Queer! Would there come a day when no topgallants drew? And the square-rigged ships would be like old crones gathering fagots on an October day. And what would become of the men who built and mastered great racing ships? And would the sea itself permit vile iron and smudgy coal to speck its immaculate bosom? Must the sea, too, be tamed

He had figured his work. He had figured his field. It seemed to him that this being done, life should flow on evenly as a stream. But there were gaps of unhappiness that all the subtle sailing of a ship, all the commerce of the East, all the fighting of the gales, could not fill. Within him somewhere was a space, in his heart, in his head, somewhere, a ring, a pit of emotion-how, where, why he could not express. It just existed. And this was filled at times with concentration on his work, at times with plans of the future and material memories of the past, or thoughts of ancient shipmates, like his Uncle Robin. It was like a house, that space was, with a strange division of time, that corresponded not with time of day, but with recurrent actions, memories, moods. There would be the bustle of his work, and that seemed to be morning. There would the planning of future days, and that seemed like