'It would have been sensible to have brought a servant with us.'
'No. Servants get into the way when there is trouble.'
Orsino lighted another cigarette and said nothing. He was beginning to think that the whole thing sounded like an expedition into an enemy's country. They were dining in a queer little restaurant built over the water, at the end of the town towards the Faro. It was evidently the fashionable resort at that time of the year, and Orsino studied the faces of the guests at the other tables. He thought that many of them were like Tebaldo Pagliuca, though with less malignity in their faces; but now and then he heard words spoken with the unmistakable Neapolitan accent, showing that all were not Sicilians.
'They killed a carabineer close to Camaldoli last week,' said San Giacinto, thoughtfully dividing a large slice of swordfish, which is the local delicacy. 'One of them put on the dead soldier's uniform, passed himself off for a carabineer, and arrested the bailiff of the Duca di Fornasco that night, and marched him out of the village. They carried him off to the woods, and he has not been heard of since. He had given some information against them in the winter, so they will probably take some pains to kill him slowly, and send his head back to his relations in a basket of tomatoes in a day or two.'
'Are those things positively true?' asked Orsino, incredulous even now.
'The story was in the paper this morning, and I asked the prefect. He said it was quite exact. You see the rifles may be useful, after all, and the carabineers are rather more indispensable than food and drink.'
Again Orsino thought of all Vittoria had told him, and he realised that whether the wild tales were literally true or not, she was not the only person who believed them. Just then a long fishing-boat ran past the little pier, close to the place where he was sitting at table. Six men were sending her along with her sharp stern foremost, as they generally do, standing to their long oars and throwing their whole strength into the work, for they were late, and the current would turn against them when the moon rose, as everyone knows who lives in Messina. Orsino did not remember that he had ever seen just such types of men, bare-headed, dark as Arabs, square-jawed, sinewy, fierce-eyed, with grave, thin lips, every one of them a fighting match for three or four Neapolitans. They were probably the first genuine Sicilians of the people whom he had ever seen, and they were not like any other Italians. San Giacinto watched them too, and he smiled a little, as though the sight gave him satisfaction.
'That is the reason why there is no salt-tax in Sicily,' he said. 'That is also the reason why Italy is ruled by a single Sicilian, by Crispi. Good or bad, he is a man, at all events—and those fellows are men. I would rather have one of those fisherman at my elbow in danger, than twenty bragging Piedmontese, or a hundred civilised Tuscans.'
'But they are treacherous,' observed Orsino.
'No, they are not,' answered the older man thoughtfully. 'They hate authority and rebel against it, and the mafia idea keeps them together like one man. Successful revolution is always called patriotism, and unsuccessful rebellion is always branded as treachery or treason. I have heard that somewhere, and it is true. But what we want in Italy is men, not ideas; action, not talk; honesty, not policy.'