Weather has always been, and, we suppose, always will be, capricious. Its uncertainty of character—in the Levant, as in the Atlantic, in days of old as now, was always the same—smiling to-day; frowning to-morrow; playful as a lamb one day; raging like a lion the next.

 

After the rough handling experienced by the Penelope at the beginning of her voyage, rude Boreas kindly retired, and spicy breezes from Africa rippled the sea with just sufficient force to intensify its heavenly blue, and fill out the great square-sail so that there was no occasion to ply the oars. One dark, starlight but moonless night, a time of quiet talk prevailed from stem to stern of the vessel as the grizzled mariners spun long yarns of their prowess and experiences on the deep, for the benefit of awe-stricken and youthful shipmates whose careers were only commencing.

 

“You’ve heard, no doubt, of the great sea-serpent?” observed little Maikar, who had speedily recovered from the flattening to which Bladud had subjected him, and was busy enlivening a knot of young fellows in the bow of the ship.

 

“Of course we have!” cried one; “father used to tell me about it when I was but a small boy. He never saw it himself, though he had been to the Tin Isles and Albion more than once; but he said he had met with men who had spoken with shipmates who had heard of it from men who had seen it only a few days before, and who described it exactly.”

 

“Ah!” remarked another, “but I have met a man who had seen it himself on his first voyage, when he was quite a youth; and he said it had a bull’s head and horns, with a dreadful long body all over scales, and something like an ass’s tail at the end.”

 

“Pooh!—nonsense!” exclaimed little Maikar, twirling his thumbs, for smoking had not been introduced into the world at that period—and thumb-twirling would seem to have served the ancient world for leisurely pastime quite as well, if not better—at least we are led to infer so from the fact that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the “Father of History,” we think, almost proves our point. “Nonsense!” repeated little Maikar. “The youth of the man who told you about the serpent accounts for his wild description, for youth is prone to strange imaginings and—”

 

“It seems to me,” interrupted a grave man, who twirled his thumbs in that slow, deliberate way in which a contemplative man smokes—“it seems to me that there’s no more truth about the great sea-serpent than there is about the golden fleece. I don’t believe in either of them.”

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