in the cliff was in a
fashion symbolical of my life. The dreamed-of rescue never came by
degrees, but by the abrupt opening of a door where there had been no
door before and by the sudden changing of worlds in a step across the
threshold. For me epoch had followed epoch with sudden breaks and few
connecting threads. One day I was a bored tourist lounging under the
striped awnings of Shepheard's Hotel. The next day found me on a
disreputable ocean tramp bound for the Ultima Thule. That voyage had
ended as suddenly as it began--with a quick curtain of unconsciousness
on a tableau of violence. Mansfield, too, dropped out of my life with
more instant suddenness that he had entered it. Now, presto! with the
sudden trickeries of a mountebank the sprite who played with my
destinies ushered in another unprefaced era. Across an invisible line I
stepped into days of luxury and prosperity.

It is told that the Inca god-kings breakfasted each morning on fruit
fresh plucked from growing-places a hundred miles away. In a horseless
land relays of runners, each dashing his appointed distance, saw to it
that a perishable dainty outlived its journey across a mountain range.
This gives a key to my mode of existence, for several months following,
though my luxury was of a lesser scale. In those months I mastered some
vocabulary--and in so crude a dialect vocabulary suffices. I lacked
fluency, of course, and had trouble with their consonant-locked
syllables and gutturals, but in a fashion I could talk. Day followed day
with a monotony of ease. I was no longer satisfied with the noisome
flesh of disgusting crabs, and gull eggs far advanced toward the
hatching. Delicacies of fish and flesh and hitherto unheard-of fruits
were served up to me to satiation. My tattered pajamas gave way to
garments of cocoa-fiber and feathered finery for ceremonial wear. The
necessity of entering into the lives of the natives brought repulsive
revelations which I endured as best I could since if I were to influence
them I must proceed with a nice diplomacy. My "fluttered folk and wild"
could not be hurriedly herded into new folds. Departing spirits, they
believed, followed the sun into the west. Gods visited mortals though
usually in invisible forms and were fond of the flesh of enemies slain
in battle. Fetich and superstition took a hundred phases. Their gusty
and savage minds were childishly susceptible and in their quickly roused
affections they were as demons