ed to
lie in the Bosphorus all night.

It was dark when we sighted the city, but it was one of those clear
darks where without any apparent light you can see everything.
_Surely_ no other city in the world has so beautiful an approach! Our
great black steamer threaded her way between men-of-war, sail-boats,
and all sorts of shipping, and if there were a thousand lights
twinkling in the water there were a million from the city. It lies on
a series of hills curved out like a monster amphitheatre, and it
stretches all the way around. I looked up into the heavens, and it
seemed to me that I never had seen so many stars in my life. Our sky
at home has not so many. Yet there were no more than the yellow points
of flame which flickered in every part of that sleeping city. Three
tall minarets pierced above the horizon, and each of these wore
circles of light which looked like necklaces and girdles of fire.
Patches of black now and then showed where there were trees or marked
a graveyard. Occasionally we heard a shrill cry or the barking of
dogs, but these sounds came faintly, and seemed a part of the
fairy-picture. It looked so much like a scene from an opera that I
half expected to see the curtain go down and the lights flare up, and
I feared the applause which always spoils the dream.

But nothing spoiled this dream. All night we lay in the beautiful
Bosphorus, and all night at intervals I looked out of my porthole at
that lovely sleeping princess. It never grew any less lovely. Its
beauty and charm increased.

But in the morning everything was changed. A band of howling,
screaming, roaring, fighting pirates came alongside in dirty
row-boats, and to our utter consternation we found these bloodthirsty
brigands were to row us to land. Not one word could we understand in
all that fearful uproar. We were watching them in a terror too abject
to describe, when, to our joy, an English voice said, "I am the guide
for the two American ladies, and here is the kavass which the American
minister sent down to meet you. The consul at Odessa cabled your
arrival."

Oh, how glad we were! We loaded them with thanks and hand-luggage, and
scrambled down the stairway at the side of the steamer. A dozen dirty
hands were stretched out to receive us. We clutched at their sleeves
instead, and pitched into the boat, and our trunks came tumbling after
us, and away we went over the roughest of seas, which splashed us and
made us feel a little quee