Who is that sailor I see crouching on that bank? Above his head is a most truculent-looking tiger; below him is an infuriated crocodile. Do you talk to me of dramatic effect, Aristarchus, in those tomes you are always maudling over? I defy you and your tribe, sirrah, to produce me a situation so breath-stopping, so blood-chilling, so every way effective, as the opening scene of Asia. That is a good hit in the Winter's Tale, by a play-wright called Shakspeare, when "exit Antigonus, pursued by a bear." But can it be compared--I appeal to all unprejudiced infants--with that first chapter of our Second Expedition? Was ever a mortal in so dire an extremity? Scylla and Charybdis, to my mind, are a joke to it. But Parley rescues him, and without any of your _Dei ex machina_; though, if there ever was a knot that seemed to require a Deity's fingers for its unravelling, this surely was it. Of course, he rescues him; for it is not Parley's way, whatever other people may do, to hurl his valiant souls prematurely into Hades, and make them a prey to dogs and vultures.
I have said that there were three pictures in the Travels that especially entranced me, and I have mentioned one of them. Now for the other two. The first represents the famous Parley himself, the English Herodotus, playing with a spider in that unwholesome dungeon at Tripoli. Poor Parley! He had his little troubles now and then. There can be no doubt that he is in a tremendous scrape at this time. But his genial temper is unruffled; he makes friends at once with his tiny fellow-tenant, and I dare say is, even now, meditating some Tales of Insects for your and my benefit. He reminds me rather of Goldsmith, making observations for his History of the Earth and Animated Nature. There is the same innocence, the same benignity, the same childish look of innocence about him. I have no doubt the spider is become much attached to him. I lisp out my good wishes for thee, thou even-minded captive. I place my small palm upon thy unkempt head, and bless thee. We are not kept long in suspense about him. A night soon arrives when Leo's cloak insinuates itself into his cell, and a voice is heard in its folds saying, "Follow me," and Parley follows, even as St. Peter followed the angel, and they reach a wharf, and fire a pistol, and a boat pulls in to the shore, and they embark in it, and Parley is once more a free man, and addresses himself afresh to his travels.