ld by
any possibility be true, was detestable as death to me, changing the
colour of the sun, and the whole aspect of the world: and anon, at the
outrage of that thing, my brow would flush with wrath, and my eyes
blaze: till, on the fourth afternoon, I said to myself: 'That old
Chinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I think, or blown to
the clouds!'

So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to build
itself. For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some young
lime-twigs in boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I set
out for a long voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, and
visiting Bombay, where I was three weeks, and then destroyed it.

* * * * *

I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not like
to leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of finding
anything so suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraid
to abandon my petrol motor, which I had taken on board with the
air-windlass, since I was going to uncivilised land. I therefore coasted
down western Hindustan.

All that northern shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time an
odour which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happy
vague dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earth
were nothing but a perfume, and life an inhalation.

On that voyage, however, I had, from beginning to end, twenty-seven
fearful storms, or, if I count that one near the Carolines, then
twenty-eight. But I do not wish to write of these rages: they were too
inhuman: and how I came alive through them against all my wildest hope,
Someone, or Something, only knows.

I will write down here a thing: it is this, my God--something which I
have observed: a definite obstreperousness in the mood of the elements
now, when once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempests
have become very very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent and
unbounded in its insolence; when it thunders, it thunders with a venom
new to me, cracking as though it would split the firmament, and bawling
through the heaven of heavens, as if roaring to devour all things; in
Bombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken by earthquakes, the
second and third marked by a certain extravagance of agitation, that
might turn a man grey. Why should this be, my God? I remember reading
very long ago that on the American prairies, which f