PART III
"Flower o' the peach
Death for us all and his own life for each."
CHAPTER XIX
McTaggart lay on the golden sands of Viareggio, warming himself, lazily, like a lizard, in the sun.
Before him stretched the broad, unbroken curve of the bay, a dazzling sheet of sapphire blue, save where the white "Molo," like a slender finger pointed from the basin of the docks, where the shipping yards lay, and masts and spars went up in a cluster of spear points, dark against the sky.
His eyes followed the line of the pier to the lighthouse at the end and wandered off through the haze to the distant shore, where a group of cypresses clustered, sombre and grim, like sentinels stationed, guarding the land. The dark, tapering trees in the brilliance of the sunshine held a hint of sadness like the presence of a grave; appropriate to the scene where that spirit of fire and air, the poet Shelley, had been sacrificed to the waves.
McTaggart rolled over, the sun too hot on his face, and, digging his elbows into the sand, his chin propped on his hands, felt the warm rays play on his bare, brown shoulders, above his scanty bathing dress.
Now he could see the other point of the silver crescent of shore. Here were noble heights as well as the sense of space. For the Carrara mountains rose against the sky, white and peaked and holy, with soft, curded wings like Delia Robbia angels against a blue font.
Below them came slopes in delicate silver point: olive trees quivering in the dazzling light, and, in the foreground, a low belt of pines, straggling out like a fringe round the sandy race course.