THE HERMIT QF CAPE MAMBA. TEADFASTLY through the centuries the
frowning pro- montory of Cape Malea keeps vigil over the breadth of brilliant blue that divides it from Cerigo,—lovely Cerigo, with Kythera nestling under her overhanging green. clothed cliffs. Sphinx-like, stern Males gives the modern wayfarer no hint of what she has witnessed in that historic channel through the days when Greece was laying down laws of beauty and splendour in art, literature, and national polity that should endure throughout the ages after Greece the country had become but a geographical expression. She gazes down upon the modern tramp steamship or mighty squadron of ironclads just as she did upon the many-oared, bronze. beaked galleys of Greece's haughtiest days as they rushed foaming athwart the amethystine seas of the 2Egeart laden with priceless plunder from palace and shrine to the exultant songs of the haughty mail-clad warriors on deck, or the incessant moaning of the hapless slaves below, as, chained to their rowing benches, they longed with unutterable desire for the kindly consolation of death. The same sapphire sky, the same sea of almost Tyrian dye, the same olive-green landscape, all flecked and diversified by the fleeting cloud-shadows, remain as they did in those old, old days ; only man's handiwork is changed. Gorgeous temples, built and decorated with such wondrous art as to be the envy of the world ever since, incomparable, not to be imitated; more splendid in their crumbling ruins over- grown bY Nature's own kindly provision of veiling verdure than the most tremendous efforts of modern architects, they spur the imagination in endeavour to reach back through two millenniums and see that fair land as it was then.
Much of the busy traffic of that sea remains but little changed. Here, as nowhere else in the world, may the traveller see the quaint ship shapes and rigs of ancient days still coming and going on vigorous errands of commerce; may gaze upon the wonderful fairylike outlines of a fleet of Morean fishing vessels until he forgets the stern businesslike lines, the prosaic contour, of his owymodern steamship, and drifts on the wings of fancy back to the days of Pausanias and Xerxes. But there is one feature of Cape Males that rarely fails to attract the notice of the most careless voyager doubling it by day, a touch of human tragedy and pathos belonging in point of chronology to our own time, but in universal interest to all ages. At the extreme pitch of the Cape a stupendous cliff rises sheer from the fretting waves for about a hundred feet. Then comes an irregular plateau or shelf, of perhaps two acres in area, the mountain rising again abruptly behind it to a height of about two thousand feet. Thie plateau is apparently inaccessible, and yet, perched upon a huge boulder in its centre, a mass of rock detached from the mountain ages ago, is a house. It is rudely built of wooden fragments ingeniously fitted together, but its outlines convey at once the idea ef its designer having been an Anglo-Saxon. It must be firmly built, too, for it is exposed to the full fury of winds rebounding from the mountain face, and the observer instinctively wonders why, if a house must be built on that shelf, so terribly exposed a position was selected. Then if he be fortunate he will hear its story.
About twenty-five years ago there was a young sailor who, by dint of hard work, integrity of character, and firmness of will, reached at the age of twenty-six the summit of his ambitien,—becoming master of what would then be called a good-sized steamship, some 900 tons register. Upon this accession to good fortune he married the girl of his choice, who had patiently waited for him since as boy and girl sweethearts they parted on his first going to sea. And with rare complacency his owners gave him the inestimable privilege of carrying his young bride to sea with him: - Hew happy- he was ! - How deep and all- embracing his pride As steaming . down the grimy Thames he explained to the light of his eyes all the wonders that she was now witnessing for the first time, but which he had made familiar to her mind by his oft-repeated , sea-stories during the few bright days between voyages that he had been able to devote to courtship! The ship was bound to several Mediterranean
po, rts the time being late autumn, and consequently the most ideal season for a honeymoon that could possibly be imagined. Cadiz, Genoa, Naples, Venice, a delightful tour, with not one weary moment whereinto wish for something else ! Even a flying visit to old Rome from Naples had been possible, for the two officers, rejoicing in their happy young skipper's joy, saw to it that no unnecessary cares should trouble him, and bore willing testimony, in order that he should get as much de- light out of those halcyon days as possible, that the entire crew were as docile as could be wished, devoted to their bright com- mander and his beautiful wife. Then at Venice came orders to proceed to Galatz and load wheat for home. Great was the glee of the girl-wife. She would see Constantinople and the Danube. Life would hardly be long enough to recount all the wonders of this most wonderful of wedding trips. And they sailed, with hearts over-brimming with joy as the blue sky above them seemed welling over with sunlight. Wind and weather favoured them; nothing occurred to cast a shadow over their happiness until, nearing Cape Melee at that fatal hour of the morning, just before the dawn, when more collisions occur than at any other time, they were run into by a blundering Greek steamer coming the other way, and cut down amidships to the water's edge. To their peaceful sleep or quiet appreciation of the night's silvern splendours succeeded the overwhelming flood, the hiss and roar of escaping steam, the suffocating embrace of death. In that dread fight of life all perished but one, he so lately the happiest of men, the skipper. Instinctively cling- ing to a fragment of wreckage, he had been washed ashore under Cape Melee at the ebbing of the scanty tide, and his strong physique reasserting itself enabled him to climb those rugged battlements and reach the plateau. Here he was found gazing seaward by some goatherds, who, in search of their nimble-footed flocks, had wandered down the precipitous side of the mountain. They endeavoured to persuade him to come with them back to the world, but in vain. He would live, gratefully accepting some of their poor provision, but from that watching place be would not go. And those rude peasants, under- standing something of his depth of woe, sympathised with him so deeply that without payment or hope of any, they helped him to build his hut, and kept him supplied with such poor morsels of food and drink as sufficed for his stunted needs. And there, with his gaze fixed during all his waking hours upon that inscrutable depth wherein all his bright hopes bad suddenly been quenched, he lived until quite recent years, "the world forgetting, by the world forgotra living monument of constancy and patient, uncomplaining grief. By his humble friends, whose language he never learned, he was re- garded as a saint, and when one day they came upon his life- less body fallen forward upon its knees at the little unglazed window through which he was wont to look out upon the sea where his dear one lay, they felt confirmed in their opinion of the sanctity of the hermit of Cape Male&
F. T. RUMEN.
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