Curabitur aliquet quam id dui posuere blandit. Cras ultricies ligula sed magna dictum porta. Quisque velit nisi, pretium ut lacinia in, elementum id enim. Mauris blandit aliquet elit, eget tincidunt nibh pulvinar a. Sed porttitor lectus nibh. Curabitur non nulla sit amet nisl tempus convallis quis ac lectus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Donec velit neque, auctor sit amet aliquam vel, ullamcorper sit amet ligula. Proin eget tortor risus. Nulla porttitor accumsan tincidunt. Nulla porttitor accumsan tincidunt.

Praesent sapien massa, convallis a pellentesque nec, egestas non nisi. Curabitur non nulla sit amet nisl tempus convallis quis ac lectus. Sed porttitor lectus nibh. Curabitur aliquet quam id dui posuere blandit. Praesent sapien massa, convallis a pellentesque nec, egestas non nisi. Quisque velit nisi, pretium ut lacinia in, elementum id enim. Curabitur arcu erat, accumsan id imperdiet et, porttitor at sem. Vivamus suscipit tortor eget felis porttitor volutpat. Nulla quis lorem ut libero malesuada feugiat. Proin eget tortor risus.

Cras ultricies ligula sed magna dictum porta. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus magna justo, lacinia eget consectetur sed, convallis at tellus. Pellentesque in ipsum id orci porta dapibus. Vestibulum ac diam sit amet quam vehicula elementum sed sit amet dui. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque in ipsum id orci porta dapibus. Donec rutrum congue leo eget malesuada. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin eget tortor risus.

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He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than believe in him. But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from every-day realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible. “He was mystifying!” I said, and then: “How well he did it!. . . . . It isn’t quite the thing I should have expected him, of all people, to do well.”

Afterwards, as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, I found myself trying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, convey—I hardly know which word to use—experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell.

Well, I don’t resort to that explanation now. I have got over my intervening doubts. I believe now, as I believed at the moment of telling, that Wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his secret for me. But whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege, or the victim of a fantastic dream, I cannot pretend to guess. Even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts forever, throw no light on that. That much the reader must judge for himself.

I forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. “I have” he said, “a preoccupation—”

“I know,” he went on, after a pause that he devoted to the study of his cigar ash, “I have been negligent. The fact is—it isn’t a case of ghosts or apparitions—but—it’s an odd thing to tell of, Redmond—I am haunted. I am haunted by something—that rather takes the light out of things, that fills me with longings . . . . .”

He paused, checked by that English shyness that so often overcomes us when we would speak of moving or grave or beautiful things. “You were at Saint Athelstan’s all through,” he said, and for a moment that seemed to me quite irrelevant. “Well”—and he paused. Then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him.

Now that I have the clue to it, the thing seems written visibly in his face. I have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caught and intensified. It reminds me of what a woman once said of him—a woman who had loved him greatly. “Suddenly,” she said, “the interest goes out of him. He forgets you. He doesn’t care a rap for you—under his very nose . . . . .”

Yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding his attention to a thing Wallace could contrive to be an extremely successful man. His career, indeed, is set with successes. He left me behind him long ago; he soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the world that I couldn’t cut—anyhow. He was still a year short of forty, and they say now that he would have been in office and very probably in the new Cabinet if he had lived. At school he always beat me without effort—as it were by nature. We were at school together at Saint Athelstan’s College in West Kensington for almost all our school time. He came into the school as my co-equal, but he left far above me, in a blaze of scholarships and brilliant performance. Yet I think I made a fair average running. And it was at school I heard first of the Door in the Wall—that I was to hear of a second time only a month before his death.

To him at least the Door in the Wall was a real door leading through a real wall to immortal realities. Of that I am now quite assured.

And it came into his life early, when he was a little fellow between five and six. I remember how, as he sat making his confession to me with a slow gravity, he reasoned and reckoned the date of it. “There was,” he said, “a crimson Virginia creeper in it—all one bright uniform crimson in a clear amber sunshine against a white wall. That came into the impression somehow, though I don’t clearly remember how, and there were horse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. They were blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must have been new fallen. I take it that means October. I look out for horse-chestnut leaves every year, and I ought to know.

“If I’m right in that, I was about five years and four months old.”

He was, he said, rather a precocious little boy—he learned to talk at an abnormally early age, and he was so sane and “old-fashioned,” as people say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most children scarcely attain by seven or eight. His mother died when he was born, and he was under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess. His father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention, and expected great things of him. For all his brightness he found life a little grey and dull I think. And one day he wandered.

He could not recall the particular neglect that enabled him to get away, nor the course he took among the West Kensington roads. All that had faded among the incurable blurs of memory. But the white wall and the green door stood out quite distinctly.

As his memory of that remote childish experience ran, he did at the very first sight of that door experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, a desire to get to the door and open it and walk in. And at the same time he had the clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was wrong of him—he could not tell which—to yield to this attraction. He insisted upon it as a curious thing that he knew from the very beginning—unless memory has played him the queerest trick—that the door was unfastened, and that he could go in as he chose.

I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and repelled. And it was very clear in his mind, too, though why it should be so was never explained, that his father would be very angry if he went through that door.

Wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with the utmost particularity. He went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets, and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right along beyond the end of the wall. There he recalls a number of mean, dirty shops, and particularly that of a plumber and decorator, with a dusty disorder of earthenware pipes, sheet lead ball taps, pattern books of wall paper, and tins of enamel. He stood pretending to examine these things, and coveting, passionately desiring the green door.

Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again, he went plump with outstretched hand through the green door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a trice, he came into the garden that has haunted all his life.

It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full sense of that garden into which he came.

There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good happening and well being; there was something in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and subtly luminous. In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad—as only in rare moments and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world. And everything was beautiful there . . . . .

Wallace mused before he went on telling me. “You see,” he said, with the doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, “there were two great panthers there . . . Yes, spotted panthers. And I was not afraid. There was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on either side, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball. One looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. It came right up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small hand I held out and purred. It was, I tell you, an enchanted garden. I know. And the size? Oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that. I believe there were hills far away. Heaven knows where West Kensington had suddenly got to. And somehow it was just like coming home.

“You know, in the very moment the door swung to behind me, I forgot the road with its fallen chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen’s carts, I forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all the intimate realities of this life. I became in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy little boy—in another world. It was a world with a different quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint clear gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its sky. And before me ran this long wide path, invitingly, with weedless beds on either side, rich with untended flowers, and these two great panthers. I put my little hands fearlessly on their soft fur, and caressed their round ears and the sensitive corners under their ears, and played with them, and it was as though they welcomed me home. There was a keen sense of home-coming in my mind, and when presently a tall, fair girl appeared in the pathway and came to meet me, smiling, and said ‘Well?’ to me, and lifted me, and kissed me, and put me down, and led me by the hand, there was no amazement, but only an impression of delightful rightness, of being reminded of happy things that had in some strange way been overlooked. There were broad steps, I remember, that came into view between spikes of delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue between very old and shady dark trees. All down this avenue, you know, between the red chapped stems, were marble seats of honour and statuary, and very tame and friendly white doves . . . . .

“And along this avenue my girl-friend led me, looking down—I recall the pleasant lines, the finely-modelled chin of her sweet kind face—asking me questions in a soft, agreeable voice, and telling me things, pleasant things I know, though what they were I was never able to recall . . . And presently a little Capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder. So we went on our way in great happiness . . . .”

He paused.

“Go on,” I said.

This is a test post with a Vimeo video link. Prima luce, cum quibus mons aliud  consensu ab eo. Curabitur est gravida et libero vitae dictum. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt.

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Etiam habebis sem dicantur magna mollis euismod. Magna pars studiorum, prodita quaerimus. Quae vero auctorem tractata ab fiducia dicuntur. Cum ceteris in veneratione tui montes, nascetur mus. Morbi fringilla convallis sapien, id pulvinar odio volutpat. Ambitioni dedisse scripsisse iudicaretur. At nos hinc posthac, sitientis piros Afros. Petierunt uti sibi concilium totius Galliae in diem certam indicere.

Me non paenitet nullum festiviorem excogitasse ad hoc. Quisque ut dolor gravida, placerat libero vel, euismod. Vivamus sagittis lacus vel augue laoreet rutrum faucibus. Salutantibus vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi  dolor. Me non paenitet nullum festiviorem excogitasse ad hoc.

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Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum. Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Inmensae subtilitatis, obscuris et malesuada fames. Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Donec sed odio operae, eu vulputate felis rhoncus.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

— Robert Frost

Quid securi etiam tamquam eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Paullum deliquit, ponderibus modulisque suis ratio utitur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Morbi odio eros, volutpat ut pharetra vitae, lobortis sed nibh. Prima luce, cum quibus mons aliud  consensu ab eo. Plura mihi bona sunt, inclinet, amari petere vellent. Quisque placerat facilisis egestas cillum dolore. A communi observantia non est recedendum. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation. Inmensae subtilitatis, obscuris et malesuada fames.

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum. Cum ceteris in veneratione tui montes, nascetur mus. Vivamus sagittis lacus vel augue laoreet rutrum faucibus. Me non paenitet nullum festiviorem excogitasse ad hoc. Mercedem aut nummos unde unde extricat, amaras.

When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night.

Morbi odio eros, volutpat ut pharetra vitae, lobortis sed nibh. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Vivamus sagittis lacus vel augue laoreet rutrum faucibus. Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra.

At 04 hours 10 minutes, ship time, the Niccola was well inside the Theta Gisol solar system. She had previously secured excellent evidence that this was not the home of the Plumie civilization. There was no tuned radiation. There was no evidence of interplanetary travel—rockets would be more than obvious, and a magnetronic drive had a highly characteristic radiation-pattern—so the real purpose of the Niccola’s voyage would not be accomplished here. She wouldn’t find out where Plumies came from.

There might, though, be one or more of those singular, conical, hollow-topped cairns sheltering silicon-bronze plates, which constituted the evidence that Plumies existed. The Niccola went sunward toward the inner planets to see. Such cairns had been found on conspicuous landmarks on oxygen-type planets over a range of some twelve hundred light-years. By the vegetation about them, some were a century old. On the same evidence, others had been erected only months or weeks or even days before a human Space Survey ship arrived to discover them. And the situation was unpromising. It wasn’t likely that the galaxy was big enough to hold two races of rational beings capable of space travel. Back on ancient Earth, a planet had been too small to hold two races with tools and fire. Historically, that problem was settled when Homo sapiens exterminated Homo neanderthalis. It appeared that the same situation had arisen in space. There were humans, and there were Plumies. Both had interstellar ships. To humans, the fact was alarming. The need for knowledge, and the danger that Plumies might know more first, and thereby be able to exterminate humanity, was appalling.

Therefore the Niccola. She drove on sunward. She had left one frozen outer planet far behind. She had crossed the orbits of three others. The last of these was a gas giant with innumerable moonlets revolving about it. It was now some thirty millions of miles back and twenty to one side. The sun, ahead, flared and flamed in emptiness against that expanse of tinted stars.

Jon Baird worked steadily in the Niccola’s radar room. He was one of those who hoped that the Plumies would not prove to be the natural enemies of mankind. Now, it looked like this ship wouldn’t find out in this solar system. There were plenty of other ships on the hunt. From here on, it looked like routine to the next unvisited family of planets. But meanwhile he worked. Opposite him, Diane Holt worked as steadily, her dark head bent intently over a radar graph in formation. The immediate job was the completion of a map of the meteor swarms following cometary orbits about this sun. They interlaced emptiness with hazards to navigation, and nobody would try to drive through a solar system without such a map.

Fictum,  deserunt mollit anim italic laborum astutumque! Hi omnes link example lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Plura mihi bona sunt, inclinet, amari bold petere vellent. A communi underline observantia strikethrough non est recedendum. Non equidem invideo, miror magis posuere velit aliquet. Cum sociis colored text natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient. Ambitioni dedisse scripsisse iudicaretur. Qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequat.

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Quam temere in vitiis, legem sancimus haerentia. Prima luce, cum quibus mons aliud  consensu ab eo. Ab illo tempore, ab est sed immemorabili. Curabitur est gravida et libero vitae dictum.

Prima luce, cum quibus mons aliud  consensu ab eo. Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi, nihil timor populi, nihil! Contra legem facit qui id facit quod lex prohibet. Excepteur sint obcaecat cupiditat non proident culpa. A communi observantia non est recedendum. Cras mattis iudicium purus sit amet fermentum. Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequat. Inmensae subtilitatis, obscuris et malesuada fames. Ab illo tempore, ab est sed immemorabili. Magna pars studiorum, prodita quaerimus.

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Curabitur est gravida et libero vitae dictum. Unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum. Phasellus laoreet lorem vel dolor tempus vehicula. Fabio vel iudice vincam, sunt in culpa qui officia. At nos hinc posthac, sitientis piros Afros. Vivamus sagittis lacus vel augue laoreet rutrum faucibus. Ab illo tempore, ab est sed immemorabili. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi  dolor. Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi, nihil timor populi, nihil! Plura mihi bona sunt, inclinet, amari petere vellent.

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Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae. At nos hinc posthac, sitientis piros Afros. Quam temere in vitiis, legem sancimus haerentia. Donec sed odio operae, eu vulputate felis rhoncus. Ab illo tempore, ab est sed immemorabili. Phasellus laoreet lorem vel dolor tempus vehicula. Magna pars studiorum, prodita quaerimus. Fabio vel iudice vincam, sunt in culpa qui officia. Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Donec sed odio operae, eu vulputate felis rhoncus.

Inmensae subtilitatis, obscuris et malesuada fames. Cras mattis iudicium purus sit amet fermentum. Curabitur est gravida et libero vitae dictum. Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum. Contra legem facit qui id facit quod lex prohibet. Nec dubitamus multa iter quae et nos invenerat. Quis aute iure reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse. Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi, nihil timor populi, nihil! Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum. Petierunt uti sibi concilium totius Galliae in diem certam indicere. Donec sed odio operae, eu vulputate felis rhoncus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Morbi odio eros, volutpat ut pharetra vitae, lobortis sed nibh.

Idque Caesaris facere voluntate liceret: sese habere. Sed haec quis possit intrepidus aestimare tellus. Non equidem invideo, miror magis posuere velit aliquet. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Quis aute iure reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse. Quisque ut dolor gravida, placerat libero vel, euismod. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Quisque ut dolor gravida, placerat libero vel, euismod. Phasellus laoreet lorem vel dolor tempus vehicula.

As we think back over its miles we recall the noble pines and the towering Sequoias of the high Sierras of California; the flashing water-falls of the Yosemite, so green as to be called Vernal, so white as to be called Bridal Veil; the orchards of the prune, the cherry, the walnut, the olive, the almond, the fig, the orange, and the lemon, tilled like a garden, watered by the hoarded and guarded streams from the everlasting hills; and the rich valleys of grain, running up to the hillsides and dotted by live oak trees.

We recall miles of vineyard under perfect cultivation. We see again the blue of the Pacific and the green of the forest cedars and cypresses. High Lake Tahoe spreads before us, with its southern fringe of emerald meadows and forest pines, and its encircling guardians, lofty and snow-capped. The high, grey-green deserts of Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming stretch before us once more, and we can smell the clean, pungent sage brush. We are not lonely, for life is all about us. The California quail and blue-jay, the eagle, the ground squirrel, the gopher, the coyote, the antelope, the rattlesnake, the big ring snake, the wild horse of the plains, the jack rabbit, the meadow lark, the killdeer, the red-winged blackbird, the sparrow hawk, the thrush, the redheaded wood-pecker, the grey dove, all have been our friends and companions as we have gone along. We have seen them in their native plains and forests and from the safe vantage point of the front seat of our motor car.

The lofty peaks of the Rockies have towered before us in a long, unbroken chain as we have looked at them from the alfalfa fields of Colorado.

We have seen the bread and the cornbread of a nation growing on the rolling prairies of Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. We have crossed the green, pastoral stretches of Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania. The red roads of Virginia, winding among her laden orchards of apples and peaches and pears and her lush forests of oak and pine; the yellow roads of Maryland, passing through her fertile fields and winding in and out among the thousand water ways of her coast line, all come before us. These are precious possessions of experience and memory, the choice, intimate knowledge to which the motorist alone can attain.

The Friends of the Open Road are ours; the homesteader in his white canopied prairie schooner, the cattleman on his pony, the passing fellow motorist, the ranchman at his farmhouse door, the country inn-keeper hospitably speeding us on our way.

We have a new conception of our great country; her vastness, her varied scenery, her prosperity, her happiness, her boundless resources, her immense possibilities, her kindness and hopefulness. We are bound to her by a thousand new ties of acquaintance, of association, and of pride.

The Lincoln Highway is already what it is intended to be, a golden road of pleasure and usefulness, fitly dedicated, and destined to inspire a great patriotism and to honour a great patriot.

The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.

On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill at the back can be made out faintly like a shadow on the sky.

On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search. The story goes also that within men’s memory two wandering sailors—Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for certain—talked over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin, and provisions enough to last a few days. Thus accompanied, and with revolvers at their belts, they had started to chop their way with machetes through the thorny scrub on the neck of the peninsula.

On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only have been from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time within memory of man standing up faintly upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the stony head. The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed three miles off the shore, stared at it with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun was about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy, incredulity, and awe.

The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the Indian, and the stolen burro were never seen again. As to the mozo, a Sulaco man—his wife paid for some masses, and the poor four-footed beast, being without sin, had been probably permitted to die; but the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their success. Their souls cannot tear themselves away from their bodies mounting guard over the discovered treasure. They are now rich and hungry and thirsty—a strange theory of tenacious gringo ghosts suffering in their starved and parched flesh of defiant heretics, where a Christian would have renounced and been released.

These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera guarding its forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky on one side with the round patch of blue haze blurring the bright skirt of the horizon on the other, mark the two outermost points of the bend which bears the name of Golfo Placido, because never a strong wind had been known to blow upon its waters.

On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala to Azuera the ships from Europe bound to Sulaco lose at once the strong breezes of the ocean. They become the prey of capricious airs that play with them for thirty hours at a stretch sometimes. Before them the head of the calm gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks sprinkle with tiny black dots the smooth dome of snow.

Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the shadow of the mountains, the clouds begin to roll out of the lower valleys. They swathe in sombre tatters the naked crags of precipices above the wooded slopes, hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across the snows of Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you as if it had dissolved itself into great piles of grey and black vapours that travel out slowly to seaward and vanish into thin air all along the front before the blazing heat of the day. The wasting edge of the cloud-bank always strives for, but seldom wins, the middle of the gulf. The sun—as the sailors say—is eating it up. Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from the main body to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the offing beyond Azuera, where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the horizon, engaging the sea.

At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers the whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in which the sound of the falling showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly—now here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the seamen along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, and sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido—as the saying is—goes to sleep under its black poncho. The few stars left below the seaward frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself—they add with grim profanity—could not find out what work a man’s hand is doing in there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid with impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a blind darkness.