some sort of
functionary, came down to our "captain," much wagging of heads and
counting of notched sticks taking place between them.

I, indeed, was apparently the least interesting item of the cargo, and
this was embarrassing. No hero likes to be neglected, it is fatal to
his part. I had said my prayers and steeled myself to all sorts of
fine endurance on the way up, and here, when it came to the crisis, no
one was anxious to play the necessary villain. They just helped me
ashore civilly enough, the captain nodded his head at me, muttering
something in an indifferent tone to the functionary about a ghost who
had wandered overseas and begged a passage up the canal; the group
about the quay stared a little, but that was all.

Once I remember seeing a squatting, life-size heathen idol hoisted from
a vessel's hold and deposited on a sugar-box on a New York quay. Some
ribald passer-by put a battered felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls,
and there the poor image sat, an alien in an indifferent land, a sack
across its shoulders, a "billycock" upon its head, and honoured at most
with a passing stare. I thought of that lonely image as almost as
lonely I stood on the Thither men's quay, without the support of
friends or heroics, wondering what to do next.

However, a cheerful disposition is sometimes better than a banking
account, and not having the one I cultivated the other, sunning myself
amongst the bales for a time, and then, since none seemed interested in
me, wandered off into the town, partly to satisfy my curiosity, and
partly in the vague hope of ascertaining if my princess was really
here, and, if possible, getting sight of her.

Meanwhile it turned hot with a supernatural, heavy sort of heat
altogether, I overheard passersby exclaiming, out of the common, and
after wandering for an hour through gardens and endless streets of
thatched huts, I was glad enough to throw myself down in the shadow of
some trees on the outskirts of the great central pile of buildings, a
whole village in itself of beam-built towers and dwelling-place,
suggesting by its superior size that it might actually be Ar-hap's
palace.

Hotter and hotter it grew, while a curious secondary sunrise in the
west, the like of which I never saw before seemed to add to the heat,
and heavier and heavier my eyelids, till I dozed at last, and finally
slept uncomfortably for a time.

Rousing up suddenly, imagine my surprise to see sitting, chin on knee