"Oh—look at it," she gasped.
"Yes, isn't it?" he said, waving his arm as if he were responsible for Naples. "Look at the jolly old bonfire."
All round, in the brilliant blue waters of the Bay, ships lay as if asleep; a few little tugs fussed nervously, a few little boats laden brilliantly with fruit and vegetables glided along as though they were content to reach somewhere quite near by to-morrow or the day after. There was a cloud over the grey town at the foot of Vesuvius; it looked like winding sheets about the dead; it reminded Marcella insensibly of Lashnagar as she saw the mist and smoke wraiths mingle grey and white, rising from fissures, creeping along gullies until they formed a wreath at the crest of the volcano through which a thin needle of yellower smoke was rising straight as a pinnacle through the windless air.
"Does it ever do things now?" she asked rather breathlessly.
"Oh yes. Listen!" She heard faint reports like distant small guns being fired. "With any luck it'll give us a bit of a Crystal Palace Bank Holiday exploit to-night—we sail at midnight, you know. It will be rather gorgeous if the old bonfire will oblige. Red fires, white and silver moonlight—why Naples is making me get poetical," he added, stopping short.
People began to come on deck: the schoolmaster walked along, his finger in between two pages of a Baedeker in which he was going to count off the items of interest he encountered.
"Good morning, Miss Lashcairn!" he said with a smile. "See Naples and die!"
"Oh no—it's too beautiful!" she said quickly. Louis edged her along the deck as a little clatter of church bells pealed from the many spires rising above the tall brown houses of the town. A motor-launch chuff-chuffed out from the quay, flying the yellow flag.
"Port doctor," he informed her. "If he gives us a clean bill we'll be ashore the minute breakfast's over. And I say, Marcella, let me implore you not to have Jimmy or schoolmasters in attendance. This is my show."
She smiled at him and turned to watch three boys scrambling up the ladder after the port doctor, carrying great baskets of grapes and flowers and oranges.