Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

316 RAVENSHOE.
leave to ask his little friend the cornet, what it meant. The
Himalaya had run a thousand miles in sixty-three hours.*
And now at sunrise an island is in sight, flat, bald, blazing yellow
in the morning sun, with a solitary flat-topped mass of buildings
just in the centre, which the sailors say is Civita Vecchia; and,
as they sweep round the southern point of it, a smooth bay opens,
and there is a flat-roofed town rising in tiers from the green water,
above heavier fortifications than those of Gibralter, Charles
thinks, but wrongly. Right and left, two great forts, St. Elmo
and St. Angelo, say the sailors, and that flight of stone steps,
winding up into the town, is the Nix Mangare stairs. A flood of
historical recollections comes over Charles, and he recognizes the
place as one long known and very dear to him. On those very
stairs, Mr. Midshipman Easy stood, and resolved that he would
take a boat and sail to Gozo. What followed on his resolution
is a matter of history. Other events have taken place at Malta,
about which Charles was as well informed as the majority, but
Charles did not think of them; not even of St. Paul and the viper,
or the old windy dispute, in Greek Testament lecture, at Oxford,
between this Melita and the other one off the coast of Illyricum.
He thought of Midshipman Easy, and felt as if he had seen the
place before.
I suppose that, if I knew my business properly, I should at this
point represent Charles as falling down the companion ladder and
spraining his ancle, or as having over-eaten himself, or something
of that sort, and so pass over the rest of the voyage by saying
that he was confined to his bunk, and saw no more of it. But I
am going to do nothing of the sort, for two reasons. In the first
place, because he did not do anything of the kind; and in the next,
because he saw somebody at Constantinople, of whom I am sure
you will be glad to hear again.
Charles had seen Tenedos golden in the east, and Lemnos
purple in the west, as the sun went down; then, after having
steamed at half-speed through the Dardanelles, was looking the
next evening at Consantinople, and at the sun going down behind
the minarets, and at all that sort of thing, which is no doubt very
beautiful but of which one seems to have heard once or twice
before. The ship was lying at anchor, with fires banked, and it
was understood that they were waiting for a Queen's messenger.
They could see their own boat, which they had sent to wait for
him at Seraglio Point. One of the sailors had lent Charles a
telescope, - a regular old brute of a telescope, with a crack across
* The most famous voyage of the Himalaya, from Cork to Varna in twelve
days, with the Fifth Dragoon Guards, took place in June. The voyage here
described is, as will be perceived, a *subsequent one, but equally successful,
apparently.