“Catch him, Trinder,” said the Admiral, and I made up my mind to have him if I had to tumble into the water for it (it was good weather for dipping in); but the boatman, seeing what I was going to do, knocked the stalk away with his oar, jabbering like a monkey, and my lizard was gone. The Governor spoke to him sharply in Sicilian, and turning to Will, made a long apology in Italian for him to translate to the Admiral, which was to the effect that this lizard had the evil eye, or something of the sort, and it was most unlucky to anger it. The Admiral gave one of his hearty laughs, and the incident passed off; but presently, as we were passing right through a thick tuft, Will said to me, “There is another: you catch him. I’ll stop the boatman.”
The long barca glided swishing under the overhanging papyrus to where the great lizard lay shamming sleep against the stalk. The boatman saw us looking, and raised his oar again. Quick as lightning, Will caught it, and was ready to strike the man or seize him by the throat as occasion was; but another person had seen it, and a stern voice came from the dais—“Mr. Hardres!”
Will looked back, still holding the oar. The Admiral did not use this name in ordinary.
“We don’t want to carry any ill fortune with us while we are trying to fight the French.”
Will dropped the oar and saluted; and the Admiral, smiling again, said we might not be able to get enough wind even to frighten the Governor, with the chaplain’s chameleon on board. But Donna Rusidda arched her eyebrows and said to Will,—
“We of the Favara have lasted six centuries, and we have always defied Fate.”
To which Will replied, “Don Comyn there, our padre, as you would call him, says he believes the Admiral is like the Roman Sylla—that there is no name by which he would so gladly be called as Faustus, the favourite of the Gods.”
We were not over long in the river Anapo, I believe, because the Governor would have us see the fountain of Cyané, from which the river named after it, the Cyano, derives its clear, plentiful water. The tributary was decidedly deeper than the river, and here and there the overarching clumps—I might almost speak of them as an avenue, for they sometimes met above our heads—broke off for a while, and the banks would be bordered with sedges of the leaves of the yellow iris, which blossoms here in great abundance in the spring. So Donna Rusidda informed Will. We quite missed the rustle of the papyrus against our canopy when we came to these open spots, though I daresay the boatmen were glad enough, for they must have impeded the way of the boat very much.
The fountain was no great distance up—perhaps a mile or so, and it certainly was a natural curiosity. It was the shape of the bowl of an egg-cup, and the Governor claimed that it was fifty feet deep; and I dare swear it was over thirty, though one could see every pebble on the bottom, and see great mullet, looking quite blue, at what they considered a safe depth from the attentions of man. It was curious to see these sea fish running up to half a dozen pounds’ weight so far from the sea, in water fresh from the fountain head, and icy cold. I was rather thankful that Will had his Donna Rusidda beside him, for he would have been itching to slip out of his clothes somehow, and dive for the stones, which looked like turquoises, at the bottom of the spring. The prospect of groping about with his eyes open under thirty or forty feet of water, clearer than glass, would have been irresistible.
As it was, he did nothing worse to shock the Governor than attempt to drink some of the same water during the al fresco banquet held, while the barcas were moored to the low papyrus bushes round the fountain or, as I should call it, the spring, which was the only place on the whole river where there was room for two or three boats together.