And full of peaceful charm were those
little cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is rather like
a light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun real
earth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would I
return to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmounted
temptation, and lived tame and stainless.
I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and the
platform-top was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternate
two-foot squares of pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed one
morning that the _Speranza's_ bottom was really now too foul, and the
whim took me then and there to leave all, and clean her as far as I
could. I at once went on board, descended to the hold, took off my
sudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast over to starboard, so as to
tilt up her port bottom to the scraper. This was wearying labour, and
about noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost darkness, when
something seemed to whisper to me these words: '_You dreamed last night
that there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin.
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