omans,
and a dozen other nations; later, the Venetians and Spaniards, and no one
knows how many other nations, all learned how to build, navigate, and
fight ships on these waters. Think of it, Jordan, there were sea fights
here almost seven hundred years before the Christ came. On this sea
floated the fighting Biremes, Triremes, and Quinquiremes of the Greeks,
Carthagenians, and Romans; and here the Egyptians and Phoenicians
trained their ships three thousand years before the crucifixion.

"Could this sea give up its dead--its dead men and its dead ships; could
they all come back as they looked the moment before they sank, they would
make a panorama of the ages, and would show the progress of the world for
five thousand years. Every mile square of this sea must be paved with
things which were once glorious in life and power. Maybe below where we
are sailing here, helmeted Roman soldiers, being transported to some
point of contemplated conquest, went down. Here pirate craft have roamed;
here lumbering wheat ships have ploughed their way; here the watches have
been set by the crews of a hundred nations; here sailors have been cursed
in a thousand tongues. Along these shores ship-building had its birth;
from these shores the ships sailed out over these waters, engaging in
foreign commerce, and the camel-owner on the land learned to hate the
thing which on the water could carry the burden of many camels. One could
sit all day and conjure up the ghosts that these blue waters are peopled
with."

"Go ahead, Jim," said Jordan. "Thet sounds as it useter when yo' read to
us in ther old house thar in Texas. What war thet book that told all
'bout Lissis and Ajax, the hoss-tamer Diamed, and the boss fighters,
Killes and Hector, and ther pretty gal Helen, that raised all the hel-lo,
and Dromine, the squar woman thet war Hector's wife, and hed the kid thet
war afeerd of the old man's headgear?"

"That was the Iliad, Jordan," said Sedgwick, "the first book that we
read. The story was the siege of Troy. That was a city over on the east
shore of this very sea, and the Greeks went over there in their boats and
besieged it for nine years before they captured it."

"How long ago war that, Jim?" asked Jordan.

"Three thousand years," was the reply.

"But they were fighters, them fellers?" said Jordan.

"Yes, great fighters," said Sedgwick.

"And their hosses war thoroughbreds, every one? Isn't thet so, Jim?" said
Jordan.

"They we