He is up in an instant, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, catching his oar as he springs.
You glide in and out again, under marble bridges thronged with people; along quays lined with boats; by caffè, church, and palace, and so on to the broad water of the Public Garden.
But you do not land; some other day for that. You want the row back up the canal, with the glory of the setting sun in your face. Suddenly, as you turn, the sun is shut out: it is the great warship Stromboli, lying at anchor off the garden wall; huge, solid as a fort, fine-lined as a yacht, with exquisite detail of rail, mast, yard-arms, and gun mountings, the light flashing from her polished brasses.
In a moment you are under her stern, and beyond, skirting the old shipyard with the curious arch,—the one Whistler etched,—sheering to avoid the little steamers puffing with modern pride, their noses high in air at the gondolas; past the long quay of the Riva, where the torpedo-boats lie tethered in a row, like swift horses eager for a dash; past the fruit-boats dropping their sails for a short cut to the market next the Rialto; past the long, low, ugly bath-house anchored off the Dogana; past the wonderful, the matchless, the never-to-be-unloved or forgotten, the most blessed, the Santa Maria della Salute.
THE ONE WHISTLER ETCHED
Oh! this drift back, square in the face of the royal sun, attended by all the pomp and glory of a departing day! What shall be said of this reveling, rioting, dominant god of the west, clothed in purple and fine gold; strewing his path with rose-leaves thrown broadcast on azure fields; rolling on beds of violet; saturated, steeped, drunken with color; every steeple, tower, and dome ablaze; the whole world on tip-toe, kissing its hands good-night!
Giorgio loves it, too. His cap is off, lying on the narrow deck; his cravat loosened, his white shirt, as he turns up the Giudecca, flashing like burning gold.
Somehow you cannot sit and take your ease in the fullness of all this beauty and grandeur. You spring to your feet. You must see behind and on both sides, your eye roving eagerly away out to the lagoon beyond the great flour-mill and the gardens.
Suddenly a delicate violet light falls about you; the lines of palaces grow purple; the water is dulled to a soft gray, broken by long, undulating waves of blue; the hulls of the fishing-boats become inky black, their listless sails deepening in the falling shadows. Only the little cupola high up on the dome of the Redentore still burns pink and gold. Then it fades and is gone. The day is done!