e series of external niches, containing each a statue of the
sitting Boodh, all surmounted by a number of cupolas, and the whole
crowned by a magnificent dagop: and when I saw this, I had the impulse
to return to my home after so long wandering, and to finish the temple
of temples, and the palace of palaces; and I said: 'I will return, and
build it as a testimony to God.'

* * * * *

Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward
voyage, but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil
sunset on the 7th of March (as I reckon), and I moored the _Speranza_ to
the ring in the little quay, and I raised the battered motor from the
hold with the middle air-engine (battered by the typhoon in the
mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it
head-over-heels to port), and I went through the windowless
village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew,
and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines,
and acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to
alight: for in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on,
on foot, I made my way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant
there, and looked at the rill; and thence climbed the steep path in the
sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a
groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing
top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a
blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun. But
the tent, and nearly all that it contained, was gone.

* * * * *

For four days I would do nothing, simply lying and watching, shirking a
load so huge: but on the fifth morning I languidly began something: and
I had not worked an hour, when a fever took me--to finish it, to finish
it--and it lasted upon me, with only three brief intervals, nearly seven
years; nor would the end have been so long in coming, but for the
unexpected difficulty of getting the four flat roofs water-tight, for I
had to take down half the east one. Finally, I made them of gold slabs
one-and-a-quarter inch thick, smooth on both sides, on each beam double
gutters being fixed along each side of the top flange to catch any
leakage at the joints, which are filled with slaters'-cement. The slabs
are clamped to the top flanges by steel clips, having bolts s