quarter under a full set of bellying sails, a Turkish felucca was
gliding towards Sukhum; and, as it held on its course, it put me
in mind of a certain pompous engineer of the town who had
been wont to inflate his fat cheeks and say: " Be quiet, you,
or I will have you locked up! " This man had, for some reason
or another, an extraordinary weakness for causing arrests to
be made; and, exceedingly do I rejoice to think that by now the
worms of the graveyard must have consumed him down to the
very marrow of his bones. Would that certain other acquaintances
of mine were similarly receiving beneficent attention!

Walking proved an easy enough task, for I seemed to be borne on
air, while a chorus of pleasant thoughts, of many-coloured
recollections, kept singing gently in my breast--a chorus
resembling, indeed, the white-maned billows in the regularity
with which now it rose, and now it fell, to reveal in, as it
were, soft, peaceful depths the bright, supple hopes of youth,
like so many silver fish cradled in the bosom of the ocean.

Suddenly, as it trended seawards, the road executed a half-turn,
and skirted a strip of the sandy margin to which the waves kept
rolling in such haste. And in that spot even the bushes seemed
to have a mind to look the waves in the eyes--so strenuously did
they lean across the riband-like path, and nod in the direction
of the blue, watery waste, while from the hills a wind was
blowing that presaged rain.

***************************

But hark! From some point among the bushes a low moan arose--the