Whether his Excellency considered all water unwholesome, or that Will’s rushing to drink it in place of wine was a reflection on his hospitality, did not appear. I do not know when I have seen such a scene, which in a different way reminded me of the pictures of a certain Watteau captured by my Lord Eastry in one of his prizes, and now hanging in Will’s gallery; though I do not maintain that the Governor’s ladies, beautiful and appropriate as their light summer robes were, approached the Watteau ladies in elegance of costume. But, on the other hand, the prim fountain with Diana in the centre, supported by two dolphins, with their lips curled and their tails plaited, certainly did not come up to our clear pool, as deep as many a house is high, carrying on its bosom three or four great barcas, hanging with crimson and silver, and ringed all round by overhanging palmetto-like clumps of the feathery papyrus of old Egypt. Nor, I confess, do the men in Monsieur Watteau’s pictures, who are generally dancing, come up to men like Captain Troubridge and Captain Berry, in the uniform of His Majesty’s Navy. And every little detail, each feather in the plumes of the papyrus, each jewel, every burnished nail within reflecting distance of the water, was mirrored as clearly as the bright blue uniforms and shining epaulettes of His Majesty’s officers, and the great masses of crimson in the boat-hangings. We had music, too, from the Governor’s—well, I call them lute-players—especially brought over from Naples, wearing the old doublet and hose, crimson and silver liveries of the Governor’s family, which their forerunners had worn when Tommaso de Vigilia painted them three centuries before in the pictures hanging in the Governor’s palace. I could believe that these were the same liveries, for in Sicily servants’ fête-liveries are not made for them, but made for the household, and handed on from one servant to another, as a saddle from horse to horse.
I don’t know how long the banquet may have lasted, there was such profusion of pastrycooks’ viands and fruits and wines. The Governor looked as if he expected Will to die when he took an empty goblet and, dipping it into the clear water, drank it off two or three times filled; though, as we had put into his port for the purpose of getting water for our ships, it did not appear why we should consider it unfit for drink. Had I been enjoying Will’s place beside Donna Rusidda, and able to converse with her elegantly, as he was, I think I should have been content for our barca to have swayed gently on the bubbling waters of the spring—to give you some idea of the size of the spring there were four of these barcas floating on it at one time—for the rest of that summer day. But I could see that Will was fidgeting to be off, and presently he asked the Admiral if he and I might leap ashore off the high beak of our barca, which was overhanging some part of the bank. He made the excuse of some strange flower or the like. The boatman, seeing our intent, uttered some swift warning in Sicilian, which the Governor very politely translated to Will to tell the Admiral; but Master Will only used general terms of its not being safe, and the Admiral said, “My Lord, a jump like that would not frighten my officers.”
But, jumping together, we got more than we bargained for: we shot through the bank like a couple of bullets. We were almost up to our middles in thick black slime, of which you could not have dreamed the possibility so near that transparent water. Luckily for us, or I verily believe we might have been swallowed up, the good-natured boatman had unshipped the oars and held them out to us, and we were able to pull ourselves up on to the barca, where we sat on the end to dry our blackened legs in the sun, and presently the barcas swung round and dropped down stream.
The sun was now so powerful that long before we were back at the mouth of the river we were dry enough to have accepted the invitation of the courteous Sicilians and gone back among them to sit without fear of soiling them, more especially since we had removed our shoes and stockings—there was much naked-foot work on board ship in those days—but Will said that he could not sit beside ladies in such a plight, and I had never any say but Will’s say, though I did not know what was in his mind.
The town of Syracuse looks as I could imagine the cities of the Bible would have looked, when one sees it from the mouth of the Anapo at the opposite side of the great port on a July noon. Not a film of smoke rises from the low flat roofs of the mellow white-and-yellow houses, which, in their turn, seem to be crouching down within the shadow of the city walls. There is even a temple, for the cathedral is but the Temple of Minerva, with the columns still protruding from the northern face.
I should have said that only Will and I went to the mouth of the river, walking from where the water became too shallow for the barcas; the rest of the Admiral’s party rumbled off in the coaches to see the ruins of Epipolæ and Achradina, and the Greek castle of Euryalus and the street of tombs, the theatre, amphitheatre, and much more that I cannot remember of ancient Syracuse, though the Admiral had had Mr. Comyn to tell the younger officers about them most carefully. Will and I had been dismissed, as not being in fit condition to ride in gilt coaches with crimson velvet hangings, and had orders to have the barge at the landing-stairs under the Marina at such a time. I know that I was glad to be excused from parading in state round miles of old stones. The Admiral would not willingly miss a stone that had any ancient history hanging about it; and with a guide telling the story first in Sicilian, and the Governor, who was slow at taking the drift, putting it into Italian for Mr. Comyn, and Mr. Comyn, who was slow with his Italian, putting it into English for the Admiral, and the Admiral, not being satisfied, putting his questions and persisting with them till he understood his point, it would be a long day. The roads, too, were such that the coaches went slower than a walk. Will had more in his mind, but this I did not know then.
You may be sure that the Admiral had not embarked on this inland voyage of discovery before he had made certain that the wind would be lacking to carry the fleet, which had now everything on board, out. Seeing that the day was one of those days without enough air to blow a candle out, he said to Will:
“I am afraid that we have offended his Chameleonship after all.” And somehow I believe that Will’s translation of this to the Governor was a very lame affair.