They had reached a lonely stretch of beach-wilderness, broken by tufts of underwood, gnawed by tempests and stunted by the barren soil. Before it curved the blue windless Mediterranean, cradling the Isle of Elba. Behind, the view was bounded by the Italian Alps, volcanic crags of white marble, white and sulphury like a frozen hurricane. Across the sandy extent, at equal distances, rose high, square battlemented towers, guarding the coast from smugglers.
Gordon’s gaze, though it was fixed on the spot they were approaching, saw only a woman’s desolated form clasped in Teresa’s sympathizing arms.
At a spot marked by the withered trunk of a fir-tree, near a ramshackle hut covered with reeds—a flimsy shelter for night patrols—the vehicle stopped and Gordon descended. A little way off was pitched a tent, by which stood a group of mounted dragoons and Italian laborers, the latter with mattocks in their hands. A single figure came from the group and greeted him.
It was Trevanion. Gordon had not seen him since the hour of that Sabbath service from which Shelley had fled—to the fatal storm whose wrecks strewed the sand where they now stood. Since Mary Shelley had rushed into the Lanfranchi Palace with that cry of terror and foreboding, days had passed: days of sick search, hurrying couriers, wild speculation and fearful hope. All this had ended with the message from Trevanion which had sent the laborers and brought the barouche to-day to the lonely spot where the sea had given up its dead.
The man who had sent this message was unkempt and unshaven, his swarthy face clay-pale, his black eyes bloodshot. He had searched the coast day and night, sleepless and savage. There had been desperation in his toil. In his semi-barbaric blood had raged a curious conflict between his hatred of Gordon and something roused by the other’s act in delivering him from Cassidy’s marines. He was by instinct an Oriental, and instinct led him to revenge; but his strain of Welsh blood made his enemy’s magnanimity unforgettable and had driven him to this fierce effort for an impersonal requital. Because Shelley had been the friend of the man he hated but who had aided him, the deed in some measure satisfied the crude remorse that fought with his vulpine enmity.
Almost touching the creeping lip of surf, three wands stood upright in the sand. Trevanion beckoned the laborers and they began to dig in silence. At length a hollow sound followed the thrust of a mattock.
Gordon drew nearer. He heard leadenly the muttered conversation of the workmen as they waited, leaning on their spades—saw but dimly the uniforms of the dragoons. He scarcely felt the hot sand scorching his feet.
Was the object they had unearthed that whimsical youth whom he had seen first in the Fleet Prison? The unvarying friend who had searched him out at San Lazzarro—true-hearted, saddened but not resentful for the world’s contumely, his gaze unwavering from that empyrean in which swam his lustrous ideals? This battered flotsam of the tempest—could this be Shelley?
From the pocket of the faded blue jacket a book protruded. He stooped and drew it out. It was the “Œdipus” of Sophocles, doubled open.
“Aidoneus! Aidoneus, I implore