e-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn made haste to
burn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and quicker--to
fervour--to fury--to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring stormed
the infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, Being,
Sensation, and I its compliant wife--then my head nodded, and with
crooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak and
drunken, upon my face.

* * * * *

* * * * *

O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I should
write what now I write! I will not write it....

* * * * *

The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hair
by the roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand will
not write it!

* * * * *

In God's name----! During four nights after the burning I slept in a
house--French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for
it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on
the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses
which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had
watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on
the heights of Taxim, between Pera proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom,
both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left under
shelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, with
gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used to
patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meant
to reach the _Speranza_, she being then safely anchored some distance up
the Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the Tophana
quay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excited
the thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from some
reeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square
mile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had not
accordingly advanced far over every sort of _debris_, when I found my
eyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness:
whereupon I said: 'I will turn back, cross the region of tombs and
barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at the
Foundoucli quay, and so reach the _Speranza_.'

Accordingly, I made my way out o