All that I can remember is that I felt a frightful weight. I stifled when I opened my mouth for breath. I swallowed great mouthfuls of warm salt water, my ears were bursting with pain, a great weight prevented me from seeing. I felt that I was drowning. With all this, I continued my desperate efforts to swim. Then I seemed to breathe more freely. I saw the sky, and near me a mass of reddish rocks. I felt a strong hand raise me by my hair, and I heard the voice of Falmouth, who said, "Now we are quits! Good-bye." I remembered nothing more, for I very soon fell into a painful numbness, and then became insensible. DAPHNÉ--NOÉMI--ANATHASIA CHAPTER V THE ISLAND OF KHIOS I find this fragment of memoirs written a year after the wreck of Lord Falmouth's yacht off the coast of Malta. If I had the least literary pretension, I would not dare to say that these pages, written on the spur of the moment, depict very accurately the enchanting scenes in the midst of which I had been living for the last year in the sweetest of _far-nientes._ In truth, the paradise I had created for myself seems to come again before my eyes, with its luxury of antique beauty, its palace of white marble gilded by the sunshine, its intoxicating perfumes coming from the orange groves that stand off against the blue sky that frames so magnificently the dark waters of the coast of Asiatic Europe. That year should have been the happiest year of my life; for those few charmed days never caused me the least moral suffering. Not once did I feel any remorse, not once did I feel my heart. But, alas! why was not the soul killed in such scenes of happiness? Why was not the mind overpowered by the senses? Why did thought survive the struggle? Thought! that power of man! Man's true power, in fact; for it is fatal, like all powers. Thought, that blazing crown, that burns and consumes the forehead that wears it! According to my custom of classifying pleasant memories, I had entitled this fragment, "Days of Sunshine." The light and careless tone that frequently appears in this souvenir offers a singular contrast to the sombre and heart-breaking events of the former chapters in this journal. _Days of Sunshine._ ISLE OF KHIOS, 20 June, 18--. I know not what the future has in store for me, but, as I often said in my days of sadness and desolation, "one must distrust one's self more than one's destiny." I hope one day, as I read these pages, to be able to see again the smiling scenes amidst which I am now living so happily. I write this the 20th of June, 18--, in the palace of Carina, situated on the eastern coast of the island of Khios, about a year after the loss of the yacht. In that great peril, poor Henry saved my life. In spite of his wound, he was swimming vigorously towards shore, when, seeing me about to drown, for I could scarcely use my left arm, he seized me with one hand, and, fighting the waves with the other, he landed me on the shore in a dying condition.