PAOLO AT SEA.
Some two hundred yards and more each of them spreads around; you may see the little brown bobbins, that mark the circumference, float and jerk up and down on the water as Gian-Battista spreads his end of net, rowing across the marked space meanwhile; then the two boats lie sentinels at either end, to guard their sacred surface from other craft, and to watch for the haul. So when the time has come, and the watching has been long enough, calling to one another across the space with deep, loud voices that are tempered to softness as they travel over the water, Paolo and Battista begin slowly to row towards the net’s centre with the net’s ends fastened to their separate boats, and, when they meet in the middle, the net’s mouth will have closed upon the captured fish.
There are not many this time. When Battista has got into his uncle’s boat, and when together, with cheery cry and many a passing ejaculation, they have hauled in the great net, it is but a cattiva pesca that is the result of their evening’s labour. And the sun has gone down now behind the purple clouds and beneath the waves; the sea’s blue is dark, almost to blackness, as the night breeze creeps up; Sestri’s coast can no longer be seen—scarce even the great promontory that hides La Spezia from sight in the daytime. Yet further out to sea they lay down the net again, and little lanterns have had to be lighted in either boat, other lights and lanterns have been long put out that glimmered faintly from the village ashore, before Paolo and Battista row back again towards the rock-bound bay beneath the cliff. But a dying memory of sunset from the west can still light the boats homewards though the summer night be far advanced, and, against the background of this dim and distant brightness, Paolo’s tall figure stands taller than before as he waits, with forward foot and well-poised body, upon the boat’s prow, till the shingle shall grind beneath her keel, and it be time to leap out into shallow water and pull her high upon the yellow beach. Maddalena’s shrill voice is hushed, the children are all a-bed and the hearth swept up; but, if the fire be spent, the fisher’s meal has not been forgotten by the fisher’s wife; cold polenta, brown bread and chestnuts stand ready by the settle, though the portly fishwife lies asleep whose work it will be to bear the haul of tunny-fish to early market.
The morning dawns, pure and bright. Beneath the pergolas of Bogliasco cottages the sun is warm already, though night-dews lie wet still on flowers and herbage. The blue water below laps but gently against the gnarled rocks where it can dash at will so wildly, for the sea is calm to-day under a tender sky. ‘It will be hot,’ fisher-wives say, ‘but what will you have when June days are so near?’ Scarce a ripple stirs the water surface, whose blue is as only the Mediterranean’s blue can be when the sky is full of colour as now, and the sun is strong to perfect and enhance. Paolo has been abroad betimes, and Maddalena is already on her way to the fish-market with last evening’s produce; but we, who have not cared to rise so early, will follow Maso this time, who, having neither wife nor children, begins only to fish when the sun is aloft.
Maso has not so handsome a fame as he who stood last night against the sunset. In fact, he is an ugly man, for, besides a face that is brown and weather-beaten, and pitted with the small-pox (as his nickname in the village dialect would tell you), he has a short, wiry figure, that for all its ease of movement cannot compare with the tall, spare grace of his neighbour. Maso had wonderful luck with the bianchette, that are a kind of whitebait, through the past month of April, and he had a good net of anchovies some three days ago; but anchovies are not the surest sport, and this morning he will lay for the sardines, as Paolo has done. Maso has a little brother—a brisk, lithe little ragamuffin of ten years, one of those who rarely have time for aught but mischief, as his keen eyes would tell you; him he sends up on the hill for watch. And while the two men—for the fishing is all done in couples, and Maso has a comrade like the rest—while the men spread their nets just beyond the rocks in the creek’s clear water below, Giannino’s bare feet have climbed the hill where the stones were sharpest for his long toes to cling to, and is squatting on the hot earth amid the thyme and the flowers and beneath the grey-toned olives, between the frail network of whose boughs those blue waves shine with fairest glory.
But Giannino notes none of the things of Nature; he is watching the sardine shoals come on. Maso and the other have parted company in their separate boats now; each is posted at an opposite side, with a net’s end fastened to his skiff. And presently Giannino, from behind the olive trees, sees a goodly company of little slim and silvery fish making towards that very pool of clearest blue-green water, where the cruel snare lies spread in the rock’s great shade. A silent signal is enough to the fishers, who are watching for it, and the boats row slowly centre-wards, till the net’s mouth has closed upon the dainty prisoners. Silver and gold gleam in the sun’s own silver light, for the little fish struggle pitifully amid those horrible meshes. It has been a buona pesca this time, and the brown and dingy coils are soon in the boat, the spoil secured safely within the well. It is Nicoletta who goes to market with the sardines; but not into town, only to Bogliasco, where men and women buy the fish from the fishers, to take into Genoa. Nicoletta is a spare and tanned little maiden, with brown feet and ankles that have never known shoes or stockings; she is sister to Maso and Giannino, but it is the latter she resembles in her wild, wiry strength, for she, too, is something of a pickle!
The sun climbs the sky till its rays are so hot that even Riviera men and women are fain to fly from it for an hour or so, while they eat the merenda, and sleep their own calm sleep beneath the shadows of rock or fig-tree. The olives shine silver-white in the fair beams that ripen their fruit; aloes and palms flourish, broad pines are darkly green and perfumed; in bays and upon burning rocks the colour-laden water ebbs quietly. But at last the sun sets again, and in the evening’s cool, fishers sink the lobster baskets in rock-bound pools of the coast, where the water is nigh to blackness in its depth beside the cliffs. Night is near, and the sea’s colour fades awhile with the last of the sunlight.
Santa Margherita.
Santa Margherita is one of the many little towns which have gradually grown up along the eastern Riviera, gathering themselves together around the country palace of some signore, which, first, had been built alone upon the shore, or springing up where, for convenience sake, a little fishing hamlet had been set in creek or bay, until now the whole of the coast line from Genoa to La Spezia is studded thickly with the white walls and glistening roofs of human habitations. The little place has had a station since the railroad has come this way—a station of its own, and not one shared with another village, as some of its neighbours, and one, too, at which all the trains must stop which run during the day to Sestri. There was a great palace built up here many years ago. I forget to what family it belongs, but it is a stately pile, whose marble steps creep down to the water’s edge, and on whose battered face the dim colours of ancient frescoes still show quaintly through the dirt which has encrusted them. The signori used to come here for the sea-bathing, and perhaps it was in this wise that the town of Santa Margherita came to be built. Nevertheless it is in a fair position upon the coast, and it was probably a prosperous little fishing village long before it could boast its stone pavements and its piazza of now-a-days. The coast swerves in gently so as to form a smooth and ample bay just where the town stands, and jutting out on either side into the blue waves stand two promontories guarding the gulf. To the right is Porto Fino, and, within the bay round the point, a little village bears the name. It is so called from the many dolphins which, near to that shore, sport in bevies beneath the clear water quickly to disperse at the approach of a boat. ‘Fino,’ for shortness and convenience sake, apparently can mean delfino.