Mark Twain: The Innocents Abroad

32. CHAPTER XXXII. (continued)

"Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of night?--What do you want to see this place for?"

"What do I want to see this place for? Young man, little do you know me, or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish to see all the places that's mentioned in the Bible."

"Stuff--this place isn't mentioned in the Bible."

"It ain't mentioned in the Bible!--this place ain't--well now, what place is this, since you know so much about it?"

"Why it's Scylla and Charybdis."

"Scylla and Cha--confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!"

And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is the ship story. Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact that the Oracle was not a biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing himself about Scriptural localities. --They say the Oracle complains, in this hot weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is passable, is the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as that article remains in a melted state now since we are out of ice, it is fair to give him the credit of getting one long word in the right place, anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that the Pope was a noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of his Iliad.

We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown, approaching to red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys or roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls.

We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea. --Fine sunsets seem to be rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are soft, sensuous, lovely--they are exquisite refined, effeminate, but we have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.