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“It must be a favored region,” I remarked.

“Of a truth it is,” he answered; “and on the way there is the orchard where grow the golden apples of Hesperides, and the dragon is dead now that used to guard them, and so any one may help himself to the beautiful fruit. And by the side of the orchard flows the river Lethe, of which it is not well for man to drink, though many men would taste it gladly.” And again he sighed.

I knew not what to say, and so waited for him to speak once more.

“That promontory there on the weather bow,” he began again after a few moments’ silence, “that is Barataria, which was long supposed to be an island by its former governor, Don Sancho Panza, but which is now known by all to be connected with the mainland. Pleasant pastures slope down to the water, and if we were closer in shore you might chance to see Rozinante, the famous charger of Don Quixote de la Mancha, grazing amicably with the horse that brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.”

“I wish I could see them!” I cried, enthusiastically; “but there is another horse I would rather behold than any–the winged steed Pegasus.”

Before responding, my guide raised his hand and shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon.

“No,” he said at last. “I cannot descry any this afternoon. Sometimes in these latitudes I have seen a dozen hippogriffs circling about the ship, and I should like to have shown them to you. Perhaps they are all in the paddock at the stock-farm, where Apollo is now mating them with night-mares in the hope of improving the breed from which he selects the coursers that draw the chariot of the sun. They say that the experiment would have more chance of success if it were easier to find the night-mares’ nests.”

“It was not a hippogriff I desired to see especially,” I returned when he paused, “although that would be interesting, no doubt. It was the renowned Pegasus himself.”

“Pegasus is much like the other hippogriffs,” he retorted, “although perhaps he has a little better record than any of them. But they say he has not won a single aerial handicap since that American professor of yours harnessed him to a one-hoss shay. That seemed to break his spirit, somehow; and I’m told he would shy now even at a broomstick train.”

“Even if he is out of condition,” I declared, “Pegasus is still the steed I desire to see above all.”

“I haven’t set eyes on him for weeks,” was the answer, “so he is probably moulting; this is the time of year. He has a roomy boxstall in the new Augean stable at the foot of Mount Parnassus. You know they have turned the spring of Castaly so that it flows through the stable-yard now, and so it is easy enough to keep the place clean.”

“If I may not see Pegasus,” I asked, “is there any chance of my being taken to the Castle of the Sleeping Beauty?”

“I have never seen it myself,” he replied, “and so I cannot show it to you. Rarely indeed may I leave the deck of my ship to go ashore; and this castle that you ask about is very far inland. I am told that it is in a country which the French travellers call La Scribie, a curious land, wherein the scene is laid of many a play, because its laws and its customs are exactly what every playwright has need of; but no poet has visited it for many years. Yet the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, whose domains lie partly within the boundaries of Scribia, is still a subscriber to the Gazette de Hollande–the only newspaper I take himself, by the way.”

This last remark of the Captain’s explained how it was that he had been able to keep up with the news of the day, despite his constant wanderings over the waste of waters; and what more natural in fact than that the Flying Dutchman should be a regular reader of the Holland Gazette?