Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/68

 at large, but at last, either by his seamanship, or by the natural instinct of the Greek mariners for finding land, he brought his craft close to an unknown shore, which promised well for his purpose of running in the vessel, and he was preparing to give her a good berth on the beach, when he saw a gang of ferocious looking fellows coming down to the point for which he was making. Poor Nicolou was a perfectly unlettered and untutored genius, and for that reason, perhaps, a keen listener to tales of terror ; his mind had been impressed with some horrible legend of cannibalism, and he now did not doubt for a moment that the men awaiting him on the beach were the monsters at whom he had shuddered in the days of his childhood. The coast on which Nicolou was running his vessel, was somewhere, I fancy, at the foot of the Anzairie mountains, and the fellows who were pre- paring to give him a reception were probably very rough speci- mens of humanity ; it is likely enough that they may have given themselves the trouble of putting " the Admiral " to death, for the purpose of simplifying their claim to the vessel, and pre- venting litigation, but the notion of their cannibalism was of course utterly unfounded; JNicolou's terror had, however, so graven the idea on his mind, that he could never afterwards dismiss it. Having once determined the character of his expec- tant hosts, the Admiral naturally thought that it would be better to keep their dinner waiting any length of time, than to attend their feast in the character of a roasted Greek, so he put about his vessel, and tempted the deep once more. After a farther cruise the lonely commander ran his vessel upon some rocks at another part of the coast, where she was lost with all her treasure, and Nicolou was but too glad to scramble ashore, though without one dollar in his girdle. These adventures seem flat enough as I repeat them, but the hero expressed his terrors by such odd terms of speech, and such strangely humorous gestures, that the story came from his lips with an unfailing zest, so that the crew who had heard the tale so often, could still enjoy to their hearts the rich fright of the Admiral, and still shuddered with unabated horror when he came to the loss of the dollars.

The power of listening to long stories (for which by the bye I am giving you large credit) is common 1 fancy to most sailors,