They moved slowly towards the swinging light, George every now and then turning his lamp inwards. In half an hour they came up with a sailing vessel, hove to.
“Is that the Margherita?” Maurice called in Italian.
“Si, Signori,” came the reply. “An Austrian gunboat ran down a little while ago, and I thought it best not to take you in tow while she was in sight. Now that they have this telegraphing without wires, I feared she might communicate with the Austrian vessels in the harbour.”
Maurice complimented the man on his forethought. A rope was thrown from the deck; George made it fast to the gyro-car; the skipper hauled up his courses, and the vessel sailed away on the smooth sea, under a cloudless sky, towards the Illyrian coast. The brothers slept for the greater part of the night, too fatigued to feel the want of overcoats or rugs.
At daybreak on the following morning they saw, far ahead, the castellated fortress of Durazzo gleaming white on its rocky headland, with the Albanian hills behind. Just as Brindisi had evoked memories of Virgil and Horace, so Durazzo—the Dyrhacchium of the ancient world, and the starting-point of the Via Egnatia—had familiar associations in Maurice’s mind. As they stepped on to the jetty he said to George:
“It’s odd to think that Cicero may have come ashore on this very spot? He chose Dyrhacchium as his place of exile when he fled from Clodius.”
“Well, all I can say is,” said George, “that I’ve lost all my respect for Roman noses. Brindisi was bad enough, but there are several generations of stinks here.”
Maurice smiled, and turned from him to meet the Customs officer, who addressed him in Italian. The gyro-car was being swung ashore from the deck of the Margherita.
“I am at a loss, Signor,” said the officer, eyeing the vehicle in perplexity. “I have no scale for such a thing. Is it a boat or a motor-car?”
“It is both, Signor,” replied Maurice.