Page:Under the Sun.djvu/109

Rh were we then but in Dreamland? A solitary palm — do you remember how Xerxes went out of his way with his army to do homage to the great plane-tree that queened it in the desert alone? — attracted us, and we sailed for it. All great trees grow alone. This one was standing between two round little islands bright with young grass, so close and clean that they looked like green velvet footstools for some giant’s use. Their shores were fringed with drift-wood and strange jetsam, among which bobbed up and down some great round palm-fruit; and on the top of each island sat a solitary crow. They had come, no doubt, from Kurghalik, the capital (so Thibetan legends say) of crowdom. At any rate, they were Dreamland crows. They were less criminal in appearance than earth crows; they did not insult us by word or gesture, for they did not caw once; nor, when we approached, did they sidle or hop sideways. Some of my readers may not easily believe in such a revolution of crow nature, but those take high ground who maintain that no change of character, however violent, is impossible. Did not Alcibiades the volupt become a Spartan for the nonce! Remember Saul of Tarsus.

As we landed, one crow raised itself with all the dignity of a better bird, and with three solemn flaps passed over to the central top of the farther island; and when we went there to take possession of it also “in the Queen’s name,“ both of them flapped with three strokes back to the first. And we christened one island Engedi, for we remembered Holy Writ, ”exalted as the palm-tree in Engedi;“ and the other we called the Loochoo Island, for Loochoo means in Japanese, ”the Islet in a Waste of Waters“ — a great deal for a word to mean, but true nevertheless.