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Over toward Roumeli-Hissar the sea birds congregated in noisy flocks, alarmed at the long line of foam the wind was whisking down the current. Behind the foam, the world seemed dissolving into spray. Then the boats were seen from the Castle, and a company of soldiers ran out and down the bank. A noise like the rushing of a river sounded directly overhead.

The course chosen by his boatmen when they put off from Roumeli-Hissar kept him close to the European shore, which he had leisure to study. Then, as now, it was more favored than its Asiatic opposite. The winds from the sea, southward blowing, unloaded their mists to vivify its ivy and myrtle.

The dead calm was an advantage; unfortunately it was more than offset by the velocity of the current which, though not so strong by the littoral of Candilli as under the opposite bluffs of Roumeli-Hissar, was still a serious opposing force.

The vessels of burden, those with lime, those with stone, those with wood, followed as they were called, and unloading, hauled out, to give place to others. Before sun up the lines of the triangular fort whose walls near Roumeli-Hissar are yet intact, prospectively a landmark enduring as the Pyramids, were defined and swarming with laborers.

So when he stepped into a boat, the Aboo-Obeidah of his eulogy, and suffered himself, without an attendant, to be ferried across to Roumeli-Hissar; when he there took an humble wherry of two oars, and bade the unliveried Greeks who served them pull for Therapia, it was to see again the woman who was taking his fancy into possession, not Constantine and his court bizarre in splendor and habitude.

She preferred making Roumeli-Hissar; but the boatmen protested it was too late; they said the little river by the White Castle was open, and they could reach it before the storm; and trusting in their better judgment, she submitted to them. Sergius, on the landing, pushed the cowl back, and was about to speak, but the wind caught his hair, tossing the long locks into tangle.