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Why, you don't think as palm-trees grow in the water? You do as I say, or you'll get wrecked on some thundering reef or other." Upon this Mr. Hazel and Miss Rolleston set to work, and, with considerable difficulty lowered the mainsail, and treblereefed the foresail. "That is right," said Welch. "To-morrow you'll land in safety, and bury my messmate and me." "Oh, no!" cried Helen Rolleston.
The grass was fresh and clean. The trees did not crowd each other; and they were of every kind native to the East, blended well with strangers adopted from far quarters; here grouped in exclusive companionship palm-trees plumed like queens; there sycamores, overtopping laurels of darker foliage; and evergreen oaks rising verdantly, with cedars vast enough to be kings on Lebanon; and mulberries; and terebinths so beautiful it is not hyperbole to speak of them as blown from the orchards of Paradise.
It should be supplemented by a corresponding wood cornice at the top of the room, and between the two as much decorative woodwork as you can afford; until "the walls of the house within, the floor of the house, and the walls of the ceilings" are carved with "cherubims and palm-trees and open flowers."
"So they grew; and I have watched them, as we journeyed, year by year; And we digged this well beneath them, where thou seest it, fresh and clear. "Thus from waste and loss and sorrow still are joy and beauty born, Like the fruitage of these palm-trees and the blossom of the thorn;
Along the border of that island the palm-trees towered and reeled, and all its gardens breathed perfume such as I had never known or dreamed of. For a few hours only we basked in its beauty, rejoiced in it, gloried in it; and then we passed it by. Even as it had risen from the sea it returned into its bosom and was seen no more. Twilight stole in between us, and the night blotted it out forever.
House-tiles flew in every direction, shutters were whipped off and whirled away; palm-trees snapped like fishing-rods, and when the wind-squall had passed, and we sat up, and tried to get the sand out of our ears, we found the whole place a mass of débris. But when we looked seaward we saw the black arch going as fast as it came. All sense of fever and lassitude had left us.
"I notice it in the palm-trees," said the gardener, "you want so many cudgels that their crowns will soon be as bare as a moulting bird." "We should do as the master does," said the head-groom, "and get sticks of ebony they last a hundred years."
And what a splendid frame they do compose, those colossal mountains, in their rich variety of form and colouring! here shining out like molten gold, there changing to a dark bronze; covered lower down with various shades of green, and with the crimson and purple, and violet and bright yellow, and azure and dazzling white, of the millions of paulinias and convolvoluses and other flowering plants, from amongst which rise the stately palm-trees, full a hundred feet high, their majestic green turbans towering like sultans' heads above the luxuriance of the surrounding flower and vegetable world.
The sun was shining so brightly, so warmly and genially in the dark blue Egyptian sky, the air was so pure and light, the beetles were humming so merrily, the boatmen singing so lustily and happily, the shores of the Nile bloomed in such gay, variegated beauty, and were so thickly peopled, the palm-trees, sycamores, bananas and acacias were so luxuriant in foliage and blossom, and over the whole landscape the rarest and most glorious gifts seemed to have been poured out with such divine munificence, that a passer-by must have pronounced it the very home of joy and gladness, a place from which sadness and sorrow had been forever banished.
But a moment afterwards, before the facade of the Gesu, when the square was reached, the sun again appeared, dazzling, throwing golden sheets of light around; whilst afar off at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, steeped in shadow, a glimpse could be caught of some sunlit palm-trees. "That's the Capitol yonder," said the cabman.
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