ying, but with difficulty and slowness, and a feeling in me that I was
being tracked. And so it proved: for when I struck into more open space,
nearly opposite the west walls, but now on the north side of the Golden
Horn, where there is a flat grassy ground somewhere between the valley
of Kassim and Charkoi, with horror I saw that _protegee_ of Heaven, or
of someone, not ten yards behind, following me like a mechanical figure,
it being now near three in the afternoon, and the rain drenching me
through, and I tired and hungry, and from all the ruins of
Constantinople not one whiff of smoke ascending.

I trudged on wearily till I came to the quay of Foundoucli, and the
zaptia boat; and there she was with me still, her hair nothing but a
thin drowned string down her back.

* * * * *

Not only can she not speak to me in any language that I know: but she
can speak in _no_ language: it is my firm belief that she has _never_
spoken.

She never saw a boat, or water, or the world, till now--I could swear
it. She came into the boat with me, and sat astern, clinging for dear
life to the gunwale by her finger-nails, and I paddled the eight hundred
yards to the _Speranza_, and she came up to the deck after me. When she
saw the open water, the boat, the yalis on the coast, and then the ship,
astonishment was imprinted on her face. But she appears to know little
fear. She smiled like a child, and on the ship touched this and that, as
if each were a living thing.

It was only here and there that one could see the ivory-brown colour of
her skin: the rest was covered with dirt, like old bottles long lying in
cellars.

By the time we reached the _Speranza_, the rain suddenly stopped: I went
down to my cabin to change my clothes, and had to shut the door in her
face to keep her out. When I opened it, she was there, and she followed
me to the windlass, when I went to set the anchor-engine going. I
intended, I suppose, to take her to Imbros, where she might live in one
of the broken-down houses of the village. But when the anchor was not
yet half up, I stopped the engine, and let the chain run again. For I
said, 'No, I will be alone, I am not a child.'

I knew that she was hungry by the look in her eyes: but I cared nothing
for that. I was hungry, too: and that was all I cared about.

I would not let her be there with me another instant. I got down into
the boat, and when she followed, I rowed her back