“To Tivoli.”
It began to rain. They thought they had answered enough questions and were impatient to be off. J. was the first to move. A guard caught him by the coat and began to feel of him suspiciously.
“What have you got there?” He pulled out the innocent berretta. “A disguise? What do honest men want with disguises? Have you any papers to prove that what you say is true?”
They had all taken out sportsmen’s licenses before leaving Rome, but, unfortunately, they had mixed the papers up. Ricardo Villegas loftily presented a license describing J.
“How is this? English? five foot eleven? fair complexion? By the mass, these papers are stolen! This man is no Inglese. He is not above five feet seven, and he is as dark as a Moor. In the name of the King, I arrest you.”
They were marched off to Tivoli, to spend the night in the vast, bare guard-room, where every hour the grave carabinieri came and went in squads, as the guards were changed. In the morning they were allowed to send telegrams to their respective consuls in Rome, and by ten o’clock they were set at liberty, with a warning to be more careful in future.
The artists suspected, justly or unjustly, that the weather had much to do with their arrest. It was a miserable evening, when three possible brigands in the hand might be reckoned as worth more than a whole band in the bush!
VII
VIAREGGIO—LUCCA—RETURN TO ROME
Viareggio, October 15, 1898.
The long mole runs far out into the sea, the light-house stands at the extreme end; here we watch the fishing-boats come in every evening, the sailors poling them along the mole to their harborage in the river. They build boats at Viareggio; the real interest of the town, quite apart from the watering-place life, centres in the weatherbeaten sailors, the cumbrous craft with their rich colored sails, the smell of tar, oakum, and fish. This morning we watched a pair of old salts calking the seams of a dory; they had a fire and a pot full of black bubbling stuff, “pitch, pine, and turpentine.” It is late in the season for sea-bathing; this morning we were the only people who braved the pleasant cool water. There is a fine beach with a gradual slope and, as far as I have discovered, no undertow. Last night we walked in the pineta, the wonderful old pine forest that embraces Viareggio, spreading out in a half circle, sheltering it from the north winds and leaving it open to the kindly influences of the sea.