“Why, have you been to many of them?”
“I have been to some others.”
“Tell me about them. Are they like America?”
“Yes, on the whole. Only some are a little hotter, some are a little colder. Then there are countries where the people are all black, you know—but really black, like your head. Or yellow, or red. There are countries, too, where the men dress like women; and others where they go like us, without any clothes at all. And I went once to one where it was light at night.”
The fisherman edged a little closer, his eyes fastened on the painter as if to win the secret of his strangeness and his fortune.
“If you have been so far you must have been on a steamer,” he uttered slowly.
“Yes.”
“I would like to go on a steamer, a big one, especially at night. Did you ever put your head through one of the little round windows where the lights are, and look down at the dark sea, and find a bragozzo?”
“Yes,” answered the painter, “and I have seen the light from the little windows touch the sails, and the faces of the men looking up.”
“And then you passed and left them in the night. How I wish I could have done that! But I was down in the bragozzo, and you were up in the great lighted ship, going to the countries at the end of the sea.”