lden Horn into the clear
blue Bosphorus.

Already the lengthening shadows of a thousand domes and minarets
stretched across its waters, and glimpses of sunlight lay between
them, like golden clasps linking continent to continent. Around us
were ships and sailors from all parts of the habitable globe; while
through shine and shadow flitted boats and caiques innumerable, and
except where these, or the rising of a porpoise, or the dipping
of a gull, broke the surface of the water, it lay as smooth as a
mirror, reflecting its palace-guarded shores.

The men were lounging about the deck or leaning over the bulwarks,
listening to a neighboring crew chanting their vespers, while we
awaited the coming on board of our captain. Meanwhile the shadows
crept up the Asian hills, till the last sombre answering smile to
the sun's good-night faded from the cypress-trees above the graves
of Scutari.

Beside me, long in silent admiration of the scene, stood my messmates,
Fred Smith and Mike O'Hanlon,--two genuine specimens of Young New
York, the first of whom disappointed love had driven to sea, whither
also friendship and a reckless spirit of adventure had impelled
the second. Behind us was one, a just impression of whom--if I
could but convey it--would make what followed appear as possible
to you as it did to us who were long his companions. I never knew
to what country he belonged; for he spoke any language occasion
called for, with the same apparent ease and fluency. He was far
beyond the ordinary stature, yet it was only when you saw him in
comparison with other men that you observed anything gigantic in
his form. His hair was black, and hung in a smooth, heavy, even
wave down to his massive jaw, which was always clean shaved, if
indeed beard ever grew upon it. Neither could I guess his age;
for though he was apparently in manhood's prime, it often appeared
to me that the spirit I saw looking through his eyes must have
been looking from them for a thousand years.

And how I used to exult in watching him deal with matter! He never
took anything by the wrong end, nor failed to grasp a swinging
rope or a flapping sail, nor miscalculated the effort necessary
to the performance of whatever he undertook. He was silent, but
not morose. Yet there was something in his measured tones and the
gaze of his large gray eyes which Mike compared in their mingled
effects to the charms of sight and sound that the victims of the
rattlesnake's fas