beneath their slow,
undulating water-hills and valleys. Sometimes sky and sea
have been steeped in dazzling haze of golden glare, sometimes
brightened to blue of a sapphire depth. Again, a sudden change
of wind has driven up serried clouds from the south and east,
and all has been gray and cold and restful to eyes wearied
with radiance and glitter of sun and sparkling water.

Never has there been such exceptional weather, although the
weather of my acquaintance invariably _is_ exceptional. No
sooner had the outlines of Madeira melted and blended into
the soft darkness of a summer night than we appeared to sail
straight into tropic heat and a sluggish vapor, brooding on
the water like steam from a giant geyser. This simmering,
oily, exhausting temperature carried us close to the line.
"What is before us," we asked each other languidly, "if it be
hotter than this? How can mortal man, woman, still less child,
endure existence?" Vain alarms! Yet another shift of the
light wind, another degree passed, and we are all shivering in
winter wraps. The line was crossed in greatcoats and shawls,
and the only people whose complexion did not resemble a
purple plum were those lucky ones who had strength of mind
and steadiness of body to lurch up and down the deck all
day enjoying a strange method of movement which they called
walking.

The exceptional weather pursued us right into the very
dock. Table Mountain ought to be seen--and very often is
seen--seventy miles away. I am told it looks a fine bold bluff
at that distance, Yesterday we had blown off our last pound of
steam and were safe under its lee before we could tell
there was a mountain there at all, still less an almost
perpendicular cliff more than three thousand feet high. Robben
Island looked like a dun-colored hillock as we shot past it
within a short distance, and a more forlorn and discouraging
islet I don't think I have ever beheld. When I expressed
something of this impression to a cheery fellow-voyager, he
could only urge in its defence that there were a great many
rabbits on it. If he had thrown the lighthouse into the
bargain, I think he would have summed up all its attractive
features. Unless Langalibalele is of a singularly
unimpressionable nature, he must have found his sojourn on
it somewhat monotono