d soon
the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars of
ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes,
purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy
vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings
and combinations of rich coloring.

It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory
of it will remain with me always.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Mani. He became a
sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was
in a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at
the opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with
interest for some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were
saying as if he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to
reply. I thought it very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the
course of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject under
discussion--and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothing
extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of a
point at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out with
rapid utterance and feverish anxiety:

"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought to
have seen my chimney--you ought to have seen my chimney, sir! Smoke!
I wish I may hang if--Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney--you must
remember that chimney! No, no--I recollect, now, you warn't living on
this side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing but the
truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't
smoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out
with a pickaxe! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a
hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy
for you to go and examine for yourselves."

The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to
lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two,
and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest.

Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and
detected this same man boring through and through me with his intense
eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to
speak. The moment I paused, he said:

"Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be consid