In the days of yore, whenever any new pestilence or distemper fell from heaven upon the sons of men, the first thing to agitate the human mind was a strong and bitter controversy. Chiron, the son of Philyra, and Melampus of Amythaon, instead of attacking the common foe, fell pell-mell upon one another, maintaining or spurning their various doctrines—contagion, infection, epidemism, conduction by water, by earth, by wind—until they were driven to run away headlong, or lie down forever. Such questions surpass our understanding. But one malady there is, contagious, infectious, endemic also as well as epidemic, grandly contemptuous of pill and bolus, sticky as a limpet, while as slimy as a slug, and the name of this blessed disease is—"The Blues." And the beauty of it is, that everybody who has got it believes that he alone of all the people in the neighbourhood is free from every atom of a symptom of it.

As his luck, or perhaps mine, would have it, Strogue was in the blues, when he came to Charing Cross. He received me with a grunt, and would say nothing, except to be down upon the cabman, and the porters, and shove his way along as if there were no English language. This is a very useful way to go to work, whenever you can be quite certain that you are the biggest fellow in the place, with no one to try to think otherwise. But unless there is money right and left behind it, at a big railway station it does not succeed.

"You are not among the niggers yet," I said, being always polite to everybody, and indignant at not being allowed to speak, while his voice rang along the glazing. But he deigned me no answer, not even a glance, but shouted out "Third Class! Where the devil are you driving to? Have you never seen the Chairman of this Line?" The porters were too wide-awake to do anything but grin, and touch their caps ironically, and then he said "First Class," whereupon they all believed him.

Not a word however would he say to me, though we had all the carriage to ourselves at starting; so I took him at his humour, and went to the other window, and drowned all my anxieties in "The Money Market." Possibly his heart was heavy about the landlady of the "London Rock," or the barmaid thereof, or the daughter of the Boots, if a maiden there were in that capacity; or perhaps a traveller even so well-seasoned could not bid adieu to his native land once more, without emotions honourable to his head and heart alike. Then the contagion of his low spirits began to spread around me, like the influenza vapour; and if he had tried to talk, I should not have cared to answer.

Such tacit respect and mutual affability of silence do more to endear two heavy-witted Britons to one another, than a folio of flippant words. Strogue was kindly pleased with me, and I thought well of Strogue, when our lofty regard for the sea-sick passengers, as we had a rolling time of it, opened, as with one accord, the valves of communication. "Give us a light, old chap," said the Captain, as he clapped me on the back; "come out of the sulks, and talk a bit."

After all the temper he had shown, this was rather ludicrous; but I let him put his own interpretation on it, for he was in this predicament for my sake, quite as much as to please himself. But strange as it may seem, we both avoided all important subjects, until the question of route compelled us to consider them. Then I told him that money need not stop us, only mine must be put into proper form in Paris; and then we discussed the whole question.

It seems that he had ordered this sudden start by reason of something that came to his knowledge only on the previous afternoon. In St. Paul's churchyard he encountered quite by chance, according to his view of it, a man well known through his travels in Central Asia, and most interesting account of them. Strogue took him back to the "London Rock," and there entertained him hospitably, for a traveller has generally acquired the power of feeding upon any wayside bench. By and by the two great wanderers came to a subject pretty sure to be handled by them, but never with unanimity. Strogue thought highly of the classic charms of the fair Ionian ladies; but Sir Robert B. called them a brown and skinny lot, and declared that there was not a girl of any Hellenic race fit to walk beside a maiden he had seen at Athens, not more than a month ago, and who was said to be of old Caucasian lineage. Knowing that the ladies of the Caucasus are not much addicted to travel, the Captain began to enquire into this, and although he had never met Dariel, and had seen SÛr Imar at a distance only, his friend's account left him in no doubt whatever that the pair he had been so vainly seeking, by letters to half the capital towns of Europe, were in Athens at the end of February. Not only did the description tally with all he heard from me and Nickols, and that scoundrel of a Hafer, but also Sir Robert, while making enquiries about the beautiful stranger, had been told by some facetious Greek that she was worthily named indeed, the daughter of Himeros, of love, of passion, of delight, and yearning. And again he had learned at the hotel, where they were staying, that their journey to St. Petersburg had been prevented, or at any rate deferred, through the extreme severity of the winter surpassing any season within memory. This I could well understand, for I knew SÛr Imar's dread of bad weather, not on his own account but lovely Dariel's.

Father and daughter were still at the ancient centre of civilization, when Sir Robert left it, and their intentions were unknown to him. But he was inclined to think, from certain purchases which he saw them making, that they were more likely to be on their way home than to proceed to Russia now, and if so there could be little doubt that they would make their way first to Constantinople. Therefore it seemed to be our proper course, though beset with much doubt and perplexity, to betake ourselves at the utmost speed to the Turkish capital, and try to intercept them there, or if too late for that, to follow them. For everything now would depend upon time. In a few more weeks the golden sun would have captured the mountain parapets, and begin to swing open with summer light the bars of the steepest citadels; and then if SÛr Imar were a day before us, what chance of overtaking him? And his foes were not likely to hold much parley, when once they found him in their hands.

Out upon it! Who could imagine such a crime overlooked by the Power that rules the world? A loyal confidence possessed me for a while, that Heaven would protect its noblest produce, the few who ever think of looking up to it, from the venom of its abject spawn.

"It will never do to take it in that light," said Strogue, though he always attributed his own escapes, which had been manifold as well as narrow, to celestial perception of his merits; "no, you must never trust to that cock's fighting. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't. And where are you then without your revolver? And one thing you overlook altogether; setting aside all holy motives—which those fellows take revenge to be—when a savage wants your property, does he dwell upon your character?"

"Then they ought to be all exterminated. What are the lives of a thousand savages, in comparison with that of one great good man, who lives only for their benefit?"

"If you kill them, what good can he do them?" Strogue asked, being always more captious than logical. "Imar is in front of his age; and the age makes martyrs of fellows of that kind and leaves the future to make saints of them, if their ghosts turn up, within memory. Our business is to act, and not to argue. Now look to your luggage, my boy, and the most important part of it is firearms."

So we took our course along the chord of Europe by abominably slow lines, whenever there were any; and at last without any line at all. It gave an Englishman the tingles to see everybody crawling, as if time were a tortoise with the gout, and the hours the produce of a coprite beetle, which he slowly travels backward to bury. The slowest man on our farm, after eating two days' dinner, was a swallow with a nest to feed, compared to any one I saw throughout the east of Europe.

There was a little more vigour at Constantinople, and plenty of fellows with fine pegs to stir, if they could only see the use of it. But as for any briskness, and punctuality, and eagerness to get a job and do it, the loafer who stands by the horse-trough on the green in any Surrey village would have his hands out of his pockets and stand on his head, before their eyes were open. And yet we are told every day of our lives that it serves the British farmer right to starve, because he has no activity!

We had spent two days without any possibility of avoiding it in Paris, and but for Strogue it would have taken me twice as long to make the needful arrangements; and now we lost four days in the City of the Sultan, making search for our friends in all probable quarters, and procuring what was indispensable. Without obtaining any further clue, we set forth on the 10th of April, by a poor little steamer very badly found, for a place called Poti at the mouth of the Rion, one of the four chief rivers of the Caucasus, formerly known as the Phasis, whence the bird, whose lustre shames the glories of the golden fleece.

Strogue had shown in very early days the quick force of his genius by running away from school, and defying pursuit, and beginning earnest life in a wherry. "You are picking up the lingoes very smart," he said, as we churned the muddy waters; "but I can't stand affectation, George, and I won't have the old Ark called the Argo. Besides, she never came here in her life; she drew a deal too much water. She went to pieces on Ararat, I tell you, and Satan took her upper deck and put it on top of Elbruz. Why? Why, that people might go against the Bible, as they are only too glad to get an excuse to do. And he put about a story that she grounded upon Elbruz, which she could not have done from the shape of it. No, no. Holy Writ is what I stick to, and as long as I do that, the Lord will always stick to me. I won't hear another word about it."

However, though he would not have the Argo even mentioned, he made no objection to the golden fleece; in fact he confirmed it, having seen some gold in the upper waters of the Rion; and as for Medea, when I told him all her story, her treachery, incantations, murder of her brother and even her own babes, he became quite excited, and vowed that she must have come to life again as the Princess Marva. Upon that I begged him to tell me all he knew about that extraordinary lady, for I had never understood from her brother's description that her nature was particularly fierce and unforgiving, though she certainly behaved in a cold and distant manner, when she informed him that his wife was gone. But that might arise from nothing more than the sense of the wrong she herself had received through her faithless husband Rakhan. And would a ruthless woman feel such emotion at the casualty to another person's child?

"Not knowing, can't say," the Captain answered in his favourite short style; "but you must remember that I have not heard that story as he told it. And another thing, he was not there to see it; for he was far away settling that other fellow's hash,—and his own too by being in such a blessed hurry. But I have got a very shrewd suspicion, my boy; you will laugh at it, I dare say, and there certainly are some things that pretty nearly knock it on the head. What do you say to this? Suppose it was her own child that was killed, and that she contrived to change them, fearing that she would never have another, and so would lose her position altogether. For among those Ossets, as I have been told, the childless wife of the chief must eat humble-pie at every corner, and is apt to be superseded after six or seven years. And she might have other motives too for getting Imar's heir into her possession."

"The idea is ingenious, but most improbable," I replied after thinking for a moment. "Not that she could not have done it, for there was no one to observe her, except her own nurse, whom she could easily silence. But her own conduct now proves that it cannot have been so. Shows that she had not gone for that game, I mean. They may be a lawless lot, everybody says so; but even your Medea would never send a man to marry his own sister."

"I hope not. It is too horrible to think of. Though it might be part of her hideous scheme for revenge. I tell you, Cranleigh, it is but a very stale thing to say, that a woman of the lowest depth of woman's wickedness is as far beneath any man's deepest pitch, as a good woman is above his highest stretch. I don't go by what they tell you in the books. I have seen a big lot of men and women—civilized as they call themselves, and savage; the latter on the whole more trustworthy; and you know that I never dogmatise. Only a fool does that: and though I am an ass very often, especially when I yield to my feelings about right and wrong, you can't call me altogether a fool—now can you?"

"Captain Strogue," I answered warmly, perceiving that he asked for it, "fools are always numerous enough. But if you are one, I wish that they were universal." And in saying this I was no hypocrite.

"There is not such a thing as a wise man now," he proceeded, after one quick glance, which showed that he liked my testimony. "We don't want them. They would never suit the age; and so the Lord abstains from sending them. The two or three last, who pretended to come, spent all their energy in scolding, which shows that they were not the proper stuff. But about this Medea—is that all you have got to say, to show that she is not trying on this little game?"

"No. I have a much stronger argument than that. No one could imagine for a moment that SÛr Imar, the most benevolent man on earth, could be the father of a hateful, spiteful, low-minded scoundrel, such as Hafer is."

"You have put it fairly. No one would imagine it; and therefore it is the very thing that may be true. I am not a scholar; but such things have been, and will be again, while the world endures. From bodily likeness you may reason more than from the greater things you cannot see. I have never seen Imar close at hand; but they are both tall, strong men, straight, well-built, and active. Imar is fair you say, and Hafer dark. That proves nothing."

"It is a vile idea, and I will not listen to it," I replied, with some inward sense of outrage on our race; "I have never seen Hafer for a close examination, and am not sure that I could swear to him, if he stood before me now. But from the glimpses I have had of him, I know this—he is as different from the grand SÛr Imar, as a blackberry bush is from a Muscat vine."

"Yet the one may be grafted on the other, I believe. The difficulty is not concerning that, George Cranleigh; the difficulty is about the woman's motives. Prove that it would suit her purposes to bring such a horrible affair about, and the horror of it is no obstacle to the fact. What makes me doubt my own suggestion is, that I cannot see how the scheme would work for the benefit of Madame Marva. All other objections on the score of human nature, or what human nature ought to be, are as nothing to the will of such a woman. Remember that she has a double object—to make herself the Queen of both the tribes, and to avenge her husband's death."

Wicked, and ruthless, and inhuman, as the sister of that lofty and noble-minded man might be, I could not bring myself to believe her capable of any such horrible design. But the misery, agony, and anxiety for the pure and innocent Dariel, and her father already so cruelly tried by the dark decree of Heaven, also my deep and abiding fury at bloodthirsty treachery, and the terror of being too late for the rescue, all together these drove me to the verge of madness, when the rotten old hulk they called a steamer yawed to this side and to that, and quivered, and rattled, and groaned, and the decrepit engines panted, and the craven crew fell upon their knees and wept; and it was announced in three languages, that we had done miracles of daring, and must tempt the Lord no longer, but thank Him for saving us from our own valour. The Rion was in such high flood that we must cast anchor, and wait for three days outside the Bar, till the rush of snow-water subsided.