"Oh, you've felt like that, have you?" said I. "So've I. Your poem exactly expresses my feeling, so it must be absolutely IT."
"Rupert, you ripping old liar!" answered Doe, aglow with pleasure.
"No, I mean it; honestly I do."
"Well, anyhow," said Doe, getting up and brushing thistles off his uniform, "don't you think that now, as 'this long day's closing,' it's time we two 'weary English sons go west'ring home'?"
I assured him that this was not only vulgar but also void of wit; and he sulked, while we turned our faces to the west and retraced our former path. Once again the summits of the hills, as we stepped upon them, showed us the lofty grandeur of the Ægean world. We halted to examine the wonderful sight that loomed in the sky-spaces to the north of Lemnos. This was the huge brows, fronting the clouds, of the Island of Samothrace. To me they appeared as one long precipice, from whose top frivolous people (such as Edgar Doe) could tickle the stars.
"St. Paul left Troas," ventured I, "and came with a straight course to Samothrace," a little blossom of news which angered Doe, because he had not thought of it first. So, after deliberate brain-racking, he went one better with the information:
"The great Greek god, Poseidon, sat on Samothrace, and watched the Siege of Troy. It looks like the throne of a god, doesn't it? I wonder if the old boy's sitting there now, watching the fight for the Dardanelles."
As he spoke the sun was falling behind the peaks of Lemnos and nearing the Greek mainland, which revealed itself, through the evening light, in the splendid conical point of Mount Athos. And, at our feet, the loose stones and broken rocks had assumed a pink tint on their facets that looked towards the setting sun. The browsing sheep, too, had enriched their wool with colours, borrowed from the sunset. Everywhere hung the impression that a day was done; over yonder a lonely Greek, side-saddle on his mule, was wending home.
"The sun's going west to Falmouth," said Doe, inflamed by my recent appreciation of his poem. "It'll be there in two hours. Wouldn't I like to hang on to one of its beams and go with it!"
"Don't stand there talking such gaff," I said, "but get a move on, if you want to be back in Mudros before nightfall."