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 considered remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation.  Sir, contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it instantly becomes commonplace.  No, not that—­for I will not speak so discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a gentleman—­but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would not ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as I have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea of Kamtchatka—­a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen feet in solid diameter!—­and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn’t so!  Oh, you needn’t look so questioning, gentlemen; here’s old Cap Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I’m talking about or not.  I showed him the tree.”