Arrives an individual at our side. "The captain fears it will not be possible to start. There is much wind outside. Much wind!"
How they love to come up with alarming, disquieting, or annoying news! The joy it gives them. What satisfaction on all the faces: of course all the other loafers are watching us, the street-corner loungers of this deck. But we have been many times bitten.
"Ah ma!" say I, looking at the sky, "not so much wind as all that."
An air of quiet, shrugging indifference is most effectual: as if you knew all about it, a good deal more than they knew.
"Ah si! Molto vento! Molto vento! Outside! Outside!"
With a long face and a dramatic gesture he points out of the harbour, to the grey sea. I too look out of the harbour at the pale line of sea beyond the mole. But I do not trouble to answer, and my eye is calm. So he goes away, only half triumphant.
"Things seem to get worse and worse!" cries the American friend. "What will you do on such a boat if you have an awful time out in the Mediterranean here? Oh no—will you risk it, really? Won't you go from Cività Vecchia?"
"How awful it will be!" cries the q-b, looking round the grey harbour, the many masts clustering in the grey sky on the right: the big Naples boat turning her posterior to the quay-side a little way off, and cautiously budging backwards: the almost entirely shut-in harbour: the bits of blue and flying white cloud overhead: the little boats like beetles scuttling hither and thither across the basin: the thick crowd on the quay come to meet the Naples boat.