the boat, and when she followed, I rowed her back all the way past
Foundoucli and the Tophana quay to where one turns into the Golden Horn
by St. Sophia, around the mouth of the Horn being a vast semicircle of
charred wreckage, carried out by the river-currents. I went up the steps
on the Galata side before one comes to where the barge-bridge was. When
she had followed me on to the embankment, I walked up one of those
rising streets, very encumbered now with stone-_débris_ and ashes, but
still marked by some standing black wall-fragments, it being now not far
from night, but the air as clear and washed as the translucency of a
great purple diamond with the rain and the afterglow of the sun, and all
the west aflame.

When I was about a hundred yards up in this old mixed quarter of Greeks,
Turks, Jews, Italians, Albanians, and noise and cafedjis and
wine-bibbing, having turned two corners, I suddenly gathered my skirts,
spun round, and, as fast as I could, was off at a heavy trot back to
the quay. She was after me, but being taken by surprise, I suppose, was
distanced a little at first. However, by the time I could scurry myself
down into the boat, she was so near, that she only saved herself from
the water by a balancing stoppage at the brink, as I pushed off. I then
set out to get back to the ship, muttering: 'You can have Turkey, if you
like, and I will keep the rest of the world.'

I rowed sea-ward, my face toward her, but steadily averted, for I would
not look her way to see what she was doing. However, as I turned the
point of the quay, where the open sea washes quite rough and loud, to go
northward and disappear from her, I heard a babbling cry--the first
sound which she had uttered. I did look then: and she was still quite
near me, for the silly maniac had been running along the embankment,
following me.