t the pains to take
the motor on board at Imbros; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern
Italy. But when I came thereabouts, I was confronted with an awful
horror: for no southern Italy was there, and no Sicily was there, unless
a small new island, probably not five miles long, was Sicily; and
nothing else I saw, save the still-smoking crater of Stromboli. I
cruised northward, searching for land, and for a long time would not
believe the evidence of the instruments, thinking that they wilfully
misled me, or I stark mad. But no: no Italy was there, till I came to
the latitude of Naples, it, too, having disappeared, engulfed, engulfed,
all that stretch. From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock
and mood of awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled:
for it was, and is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the
earth's surface is being purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how
shall _I_ be found?

However, I went on my way, but more leisurely, not daring for a long
time to do anything, lest I might offend anyone; and, in this foolish
cowering mind, coasted all the western coast of Spain and France during
five weeks, in that prolonged intensity of calm weather which now
alternates with storms that transcend all thought, till I came again to
Calais: and there, for the first time, landed.

Here I would no longer contain myself, but burned; and that magnificent
stretch of forest that lay between Agincourt and Abbeville, covering
five square miles, I burned; and Abbeville I burned; and Amiens I
burned; and three forests between Amiens and Paris I burned; and Paris I
burned; burning and burning during four months, leaving behind me
smoking districts, a long tract of ravage, like some being of the Pit
that blights where pass his flaming wings.

* * * * *

This of city-burning has now become a habit with me more enchaining--and
infinitely more debased--than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol
to the drunkard. I count it among the prime necessaries of my life: it
is my brandy, my bacchanal, my secret sin. I have burned Calcutta,
Pekin, and San Francisco. In spite of the restraining influence of this
palace, I have burned and burned. I have burned two hundred cities and
countrysides. Like Leviathan disporting himself in the sea, so I have
rioted in this earth.

* * * * *

After an absence of six months, I returne