The power of listening to long stories (for which, by-the-bye, I am giving you large credit) is common, I fancy, to most sailors, and the Greeks have it to a high degree, for they can be perfectly patient under a narrative of two or three hours’ duration.  These long stories are mostly founded upon Oriental topics, and in one of them I recognised with some alteration an old friend of the “Arabian Nights.”  I inquired as to the source from which the story had been derived, and the crew all agreed that it had been handed down unwritten from Greek to Greek.  Their account of the matter does not, perhaps, go very far towards showing the real origin of the tale; but when I afterwards took up the “Arabian Nights,” I became strongly impressed with a notion that they must have sprung from the brain of a Greek.  It seems to me that these stories, whilst they disclose a complete and habitual knowledge of things Asiatic, have about them so much of freshness and life, so much of the stirring and volatile European character, that they cannot have owed their conception to a mere Oriental, who for creative purposes is a thing dead and dry—­a mental mummy, that may have been a live king just after the Flood, but has since lain balmed in spice.  At the time of the Caliphat the Greek race was familiar enough to Baghdad:  they were the merchants, the pedlars, the barbers, and intriguers-general of south-western Asia, and therefore the Oriental materials with which the Arabian tales were wrought must have been completely at the command of the inventive people to whom I would attribute their origin.

We were nearing the isle of Cyprus when there arose half a gale of wind, with a heavy chopping sea.  My Greek seamen considered that the weather amounted not to a half, but to an integral gale of wind at the very least, so they put up the helm, and scudded for twenty hours.  When we neared the mainland of Anadoli the gale ceased, and a favourable breeze sprung up, which brought us off Cyprus once more.  Afterwards the wind changed again, but we were still able to lay our course by sailing close-hauled.

We were at length in such a position, that by holding on our course for about half-an-hour we should get under the lee of the island and find ourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been gradually freshening; it now blew hard, and there was a heavy sea running.

As the grounds for alarm arose, the crew gathered together in one close group; they stood pale and grim under their hooded capotes like monks awaiting a massacre, anxiously looking by turns along the pathway of the storm and then upon each other, and then upon the eye of the captain who stood by the helmsman.  Presently the Hydriot came aft, more moody than ever, the bearer of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of the struggle; he received a resolute answer, and still we held our course.  Soon there came a heavy sea, that caught the bow of the brigantine as