sing at last from our clammy shrouds, we gave chase; but the
water-nymphs had fled. Then we barricaded the bungalow, and held a
council of war. Sitting in moist conclave, we were again assailed and
driven back to our rooms, which might now be likened to a swimming bath
at low-tide. We shrieked for stimulants, but were stoutly denied, and
then we took to the woods in a fit of indignation, bordering closely
upon a state of nature.

I thought to bury myself in the trackless wild; to end my days in the
depths of the primeval forest. But I remembered how a tiger-cat had been
lately seen emerging from these otherwise alluring haunts, and returned
at once to the open, where I glistened in the moonlight, now radiant,
and shivered at the thought of the possible snakes coiling about my
feet. My disgust of life was full; yet in the midst of it I saw the
reviving flames dancing upon the hearth-stone, and the click of glasses
recalled me to my senses.

We returned in a body, a defeated brotherhood, accepting as a
peace-offering such life-giving draughts as compelled us, almost against
our will, to drink to the very dregs in token of full surrender. Then
rheumatism and I lay down together, and a little child might have
played with any two of us. I assured my miserable companions that "I was
not accustomed to such treatment." Alf added that "it was more than he
had bargained for." Bartholomew had neither speech nor language
wherewith to vent his spleen. As for the bland and blooming Croesus--he
who had been lapped in luxury and cradled in delight--it was his private
opinion, publicly expressed, that "the like of it was unknown in the
annals of social history."

[Illustration: "The Gallery Among the Huge Vases of Palms and
Creepers."]

Yet on the Sunday--our final day at the bungalow--you would have thought
that the gods had assembled together to hold sweet converse; and, when
we lounged in the shadow of the invisible Ida, never looked the earth
more fair to us. The whole land was in blossom from the summit to the
sea; the gardeners, as they walked among their vines, prated of Sicily
and sang songs of their Sun-land. There was no chapel at hand, and no
mass for the repose of souls that had been sorely troubled; but the
charm of those young women--they were salving our wounds as women know
how to do--and the voluptuous feast that was laid for us, when we
emptied the fatal larder; the music, and the thousand arts employed to
restore