The men were lounging about the deck or leaning over the bulwarks, listening to a neighboring crew chanting their vespers, while we awaited the coming on board of our captain.  Meanwhile the shadows crept up the Asian hills, till the last sombre answering smile to the sun’s good-night faded from the cypress-trees above the graves of Scutari.

Beside me, long in silent admiration of the scene, stood my messmates, Fred Smith and Mike O’Hanlon,—­two genuine specimens of Young New York, the first of whom disappointed love had driven to sea, whither also friendship and a reckless spirit of adventure had impelled the second.  Behind us was one, a just impression of whom—­if I could but convey it—­would make what followed appear as possible to you as it did to us who were long his companions.  I never knew to what country he belonged; for he spoke any language occasion called for, with the same apparent ease and fluency.  He was far beyond the ordinary stature, yet it was only when you saw him in comparison with other men that you observed anything gigantic in his form.  His hair was black, and hung in a smooth, heavy, even wave down to his massive jaw, which was always clean shaved, if indeed beard ever grew upon it.  Neither could I guess his age; for though he was apparently in manhood’s prime, it often appeared to me that the spirit I saw looking through his eyes must have been looking from them for a thousand years.

And how I need to exult in watching him deal with matter!  He never took anything by the wrong end, nor failed to grasp a swinging rope or a flapping sail, nor miscalculated the effort necessary to the performance of whatever he undertook.  He was silent, but not morose.  Yet there was something in his measured tones and the gaze of his large gray eyes which Mike compared in their mingled effects to the charms of sight and sound that the victims of the rattlesnake’s fascination are said to undergo.  Whatever sensations they occasioned, men shrank from renewing them, and the frankest and boldest of the crew shunned occasions for addressing him.  Stranger still, this feeling, instead of wearing off by the close companionship of our little bark, seemed to deepen and strengthen, until at length, except myself, no one spoke to him who could avoid it.  Even the captain, when circumstances allowed him a choice, always directed his orders to another, though this man’s duties were performed with the quiet promptness of a machine.  If he was conscious of anything peculiar in the behavior of his companions toward him, he betrayed no indication of it.  Such he was who stood listening, with an appearance of interest unusual in him, to our otherwise inconsequent chat.

“You are bidding a very silent adieu to the Genius of the East,” I said.

“Yes,” Fred answered, “it’s her first actual revelation to me, but it’s a glorious one.”

“Let those who love to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas,” said Mike; “but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales and seeming to impregnate the very air with the pleasures of desire, justify the decision of Paris.  Hurrah for Asiatic Venus!”