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WHERE CASSIO DRANK 255 without my being at the trouble to describe it to him. I was, in fact, almost as much at home as if I had been sitting in the stalls of the Lyceum Theatre. And yet here, though it was hard to believe it, was not pasteboard but reality. From these em-brasures, whose stones were still so keen though grass trembled along their crevices, cannon once thundered. The genuine sea-wind was at this moment breathing on them, and at the bases of their walls the live waves were splashing. The various views of the town from this position were extensive, in especial those of the harbour with the walls and the quay facing it. This harbour, so engineers say, might without any great expenditure be made one of the finest in the Mediterranean ; but now on its glassy waters only a few boats were rocking. No-thing larger could enter ; it is almost silted up, having been left to complete neglect since the days of the Turkish conquest. As to the castle, half of the rooms, it seemed to me, were walled up and utterly inaccessible. I certainly saw along one whole side of the court a row of windows which had no corresponding doors. I made my way, however, into a number of vaulted chambers—prisons, guard-rooms, and magazines for powder—and at last I discovered a great echoing hall, roofed with Norman arches that rested on heavy pillars, evidently, I said to myself, the very hall where Iago and Cassio had ' made the canakin clink.'

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