e
celebrated Milordos Inglesis, the friend of the Universal Patriarch, is
arrived, and that he kindly intends to visit their monastery; and that
he is a great ally of the Sultan's, and of all the captains of all the
men of war that come down the Archipelago: and," added I, "make haste
now, and let us be up at the monastery lest our friends in the brig
there should take it into their heads to come back and cut our throats."

Away he went, and I and the saddle-bags remained below. For some time I
solaced myself by throwing stones into the water, and then I walked up
the path to look about me, and found a red mulberry-tree with fine ripe
mulberries on it, of which I ate a prodigious number in order to pass
away the time. As I was studying the Byzantine tower, I thought I saw
something peeping out of a loophole near the top of it, and, on looking
more attentively, I saw it was the head of an old man with a long grey
beard, who was gazing cautiously at me. I shouted out at the top of my
voice, "Kalemera sas, ariste, kalemera sas (good day to you, sir); ora
kali sas (good morning to you); [Greek: tou dapomeibomenos];" he
answered in return, "Kalos orizete?" (how do you do?) So I went up to
the tower, passed over a plank that served as a drawbridge across a
chasm, and at the door of a wall which surrounded the lower buildings
stood a little old monk, the same who had been peeping out of the
loophole above. He took me into his castle, where he seemed to be living
all alone in a Byzantine lean-to at the foot of the tower, the window of
his room looking over the port beneath. This room had numerous pegs in
the wall, on which were hung dried herbs and simples; one or two great
jars stood in the corner, and these and a small divan formed all his
household furniture. We began to talk in Romaic, but I was not very
strong in that language, and presently stuck fast. He showed me over
the tower, which contained several groined vaulted rooms one above
another, all empty. From the top there was a glorious view of the
islands and the sea. Thought I to myself, this is a real, genuine,
unsophisticated live hermit; he is not stuffed like the hermit at
Vauxhall, nor made up of beard and blankets like those on the stage; he
is a genuine specimen of an almost extinct race. What would not Walter
Scott have given for him? The aspect of my host and his Byzantine tower
savoured so completely of the days of the twelfth century, that I seemed
to have