over again for two or three more till they wear them out, and after that for days together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word!  They have literally nothing whatever to talk about.  The arrival of an American man-of-war is a godsend to them.  “O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have seen in thy face?” It is the completest exile that I can conceive of.  I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.

I am glad to have seen Tangier—­the second-oldest town in the world.  But I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe.

We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next forty-eight hours.

CHAPTER X.

We passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean.  It was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day—­faultlessly beautiful.  A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains of water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly, brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities with the spell of its fascination.

They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean—­a thing that is certainly rare in most quarters of the globe.  The evening we sailed away from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle, that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner gong and tarried to worship!

He said:  “Well, that’s gorgis, ain’t it!  They don’t have none of them things in our parts, do they?  I consider that them effects is on account of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun’s diramic combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter.  What should you think?”

“Oh, go to bed!” Dan said that, and went away.

“Oh, yes, it’s all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an argument which another man can’t answer.  Dan don’t never stand any chance in an argument with me.  And he knows it, too.  What should you say, Jack?”

“Now, Doctor, don’t you come bothering around me with that dictionary bosh.  I don’t do you any harm, do I?  Then you let me alone.”

“He’s gone, too.  Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as they say, but the old man’s most too many for ’em.  Maybe the Poet Lariat ain’t satisfied with them deductions?”

The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below.