Will sang on, and presently the shutter of one of these windows was opened just a chink, and a ray of light stabbed the darkness.
Will sang on, and the opening widened gradually, revealing first a hand and then the graceful head of Donna Rusidda; and finally she flung the shutters right back and stood in full view at the window, inclining graciously. Will sang one or two more songs, and then, making a very fine salute, and bowing, put his lute or zither under his arm and joined me where I was standing in the shadow. The zither was duly wrapped up again by the light of a flickering oil lamp which hung under a much venerated image of the Virgin and Child let into the wall of the Piazza, the open space which I have mentioned as being close to the palace. The boatman then led the way back to his barca, and rowed us swiftly and silently out to the flagship, under the starboard mizzen chains, where we found our rope still hanging. We then took our shoes off and tied them together and hung them round our necks, and Will made the boatman a liberal present, which I dare swear took a month’s money from his pocket.
Creeping very cautiously, we reached our bunks without detection, and I turned round and went to sleep, thinking that Master Will had had monstrous little play for his money.
Chapter VI.—At the Fountain of Cyané and the Papyrus Beds of the Anapo.
ON the next day, having taken in all manner of supplies to our complete satisfaction, and there not being wind enough to take us out, as was too obvious even for the Governor to protest, the Admiral expressed his desire to see the remains of ancient Syracuse, more particularly those parts connected with the siege, and the surrender of the Athenians, which last shocked him very much. “To surrender,” he said, “is to lose all your men and none of the enemy’s, to give him much larger stores of arms and ammunition. To surrender is shameful; to die fighting against insuperable odds is the finest kind of death. If those Athenians had gone on fighting their way, though it might have cost the Syracusans only one man for their two, or one man for their three, depend upon it some of them would have got through to the friendly city of Catania.”[2]
[2] Catana was the ancient name.
In the morning the Governor had arranged that we were to visit the river Anapo, the only place, it is said, where the papyrus used for the books of antiquity continues to grow in a natural state, taking on our way the few stones which mark the position near which the Athenians met their last defeat.
We had to rise betimes to do this, but the Governor explained that at Syracuse there was always what he called a little storm in the afternoon. The Admiral replied that he did not imagine that any storm which they could have in that bay would be like to frighten his Majesty’s sailors, but if it came he should be glad to oblige the Governor by sailing out on it to get a day nearer to those rascally French.
Quite early in the morning, before one breakfasts in England, we rowed across the Great Port in the Admiral’s barge to the low-lying mouth of the river. The Admiral made me coxswain for the day, out of the goodness of his heart, I know, that Will should have a companion. We could not enter the river for a bar with only a few inches of water on it; but we were met by a very comical sight, for no sooner had we grounded a few feet off the land than a mounted orderly came on board. He had on enormous top boots and spurs, and a kind of sabre a great deal too large for him, and he was all belts, and had on his head the most wonderful kind of ancient Roman helmet, with a huge brass cockscomb and the most extravagant plumes of horsehair I have ever seen, calling to mind the pictures of Sir William Johnson’s Indian braves during the late war in America. But for all this he was mounted, not on his horse, which he might very well have ridden out to us, but sitting a-straddle on the left shoulder of a tall fisherman, who threw him aboard with so little ceremony that, if he had not been caught by our men, he would surely have fallen over his sabre and broken it.