The Island of Enchantment

by Justus Miles Forman

"It is a bad night, lord," said he. "That sea will be hell in another hour." And he moved off forward to give orders to his men.

There seemed nothing for it but to go on, and, in the sheltered cove at the north of Arbe, where the disembarkment was to take pace, await the other ships. Young Zuan felt no great anxiety over them; he was sure that they had merely been driven northward, and would have to round Cherso, and then make their way down again through the sheltered "canal" between that island and Veglia. His only fear was that they might not reach Arbe before morning, in which case the relief of the city—granting always that the ban's expedition had already occupied it—would have to be delayed until another night.

He put about again, and, running before the strong sirocco (the wind, of course, reaches these sheltered waters, somewhat abated, though there is no sea), made out the lights of Arbe within two hours. In another hour, leaving the galley well to the west of the island and hidden in the gloom, he was in a skiff, rowed by two strong sailor-men, creeping round the walls of the city.

Now it has been said that the city occupies a southward-jutting claw of rock. The villas and streets, indeed, crowd to the very edge of the narrow ridge. On the western side the sea-wall, a hundred feet high, rises sheer from the water, and is continued upward by the walls of the buildings. Eastward, however, round the point, the land slopes lower, and here is a sheltered cove in the crook of the rocky claw, with a mole and landing-place of hewn stone. Upon the landing-place opens a public square.

Young Zuan in his skiff crept round the point, and, always under the shelter of the sea-wall, into the still harbor where was the landing-place. Fifty yards from the point where the sea-wall dropped to the water's level and the open square began, he halted. From the wall near by lion heads of carved stone projected, and in each beast's mouth hung a great bronze ring for mooring ships. One of the two sailor-men laid hold of a ring and held the skiff steady, and Zuan rose to his feet to look.

Far over his head the wind—driving a thin rain before it once more—shrieked and whistled past the roofs of Arbe, and flapped the gay awnings which hung over the marble balconies. Once, above the wind's noise, a woman's shriek rose and held and then died suddenly. Beyond, in the open square, a great fire blazed on the flags, and hurrying men in strange dress threw armfuls of fuel upon it. Others held hands and danced about the fire in a ring, like devils, singing a weird and wild chant. It was a fine chant and stirring, and these Huns sang it well, but to young Zuan Gradenigo's ears it was the baying of unclean dogs.

He dropped back upon the thwart of his skiff with a sobbing curse. The ban's Magyar strumpet was set where the ban had sworn to set her.

"Row to the galley!" he said, and as the two sailor-men bent to their work, standing at their oars gondolier fashion, and the skiff leaped forward through the wet gloom, he laid his face in his hands and it twisted and worked bitterly. He was by no means a coward, and he was not a particularly imaginative man, but the picture of that leaping fire and the leaping, chanting devils about it persisted before his eyes, and he looked forward to the struggle which was to come, and an odd premonition of disaster took possession of him and would not be driven away.

In the tiny sheltered cove of rendezvous, two miles above the city, they anchored the galley and disembarked. There is a rocky headland beside the cove, high at its outer end, and here certain trusty officers took their station, with lanterns muffled in their cloaks, to watch for the approach of the other two ships. Young Zuan went within a deserted fisherman's hut which stood where wood and beach met, and there held council with his sailing-master and his chief lieutenant. He was still strong in the belief that Il Lupo's ship and the other were safe and would arrive in a few hours—it was by now somewhat after midnight—but the old sailing-master again shook a gloomy head. He had served Venice for forty years on land and sea, and he was a pessimist.