* * * * * [Illustration: ... Beneath us, at a distance that may have been five hundred feet and may have been a thousand, the vaults and domes and columns of innumerable stone edifices shone palely and with sallow luster. Surely, we thought, this was some unheard-of Athens, doomed long ago by tidal wave or volcano ... Palace after magnificent palace, many seemingly modelled by architects of old Greece, went gliding by beneath us; countless statues, tall as the buildings, pointed up at us with hands that were uncannily life-like; wide avenue after wide avenue flashed by, and one or two colossal theatres of Grecian design ...] * * * * * CHAPTER X Discoveries Great as was my joy upon observing that the entrancing mysterious lady was Stranahan’s tutor, it was to be some time before her daily proximity had any effect upon my life. And meanwhile I was resigning myself to a regular routine, a routine only partly of my own choosing, and largely prescribed by those whom I had come to consider my masters. Each night (and by night I mean the period of eight or ten hours when the golden orbs were quenched and the city was in total blackness) I would sleep with Rawson and Stranahan on screened open-air rooms on the roof. And each day I would live almost as though by formula. Aroused by the burst of light that marked the queer underworld dawn, I would take a plunge in a salt-water swimming pool in a court of our apartment. A few minutes later I would join my companions in a repast of some fragile little native cakes and of some queer fruit like a cross between the apricot and peach, which were brought to us regularly by well-laden carriers whom I observed likewise supplying neighboring houses. Breakfast over, we were free for a while; and then I would usually go rambling about the city with Rawson or Stranahan, or sometimes with all my five former shipmates; and we would have a merry time laughing and chatting, inspecting the various palaces, colonnades and gardens, and poking fun at any object that happened to strike us as curious or absurd. After an hour or two we would return to our apartments, to await the arrival of our tutors, who had a habit of appearing in a band of six (one for each of us) sometime toward the end of the morning. Stranahan was still the most fortunate of us all, since for many weeks his tutor continued to be that woman of the Madonna features and magnetic large blue eyes; but the rest of us were also fortunate in a way, for she would always beam upon us with bright “Good morning” in the native tongue; and I personally had hopes that the time was not far-off when we should be better acquainted.