"What nonsense! How silly you are this morning!"
Her color deepened, however, and Jack did not feel that his remark had missed fire. He smiled to himself, and just then the carriage brought up with a jerk on the left side of the way, in front of a small green door in a gray retaining-wall. Over the door was printed in black letters: Tomba di Virgilio.
"Here we are," Jack said.
He got out with the field-glasses he had brought, and extended his hand to assist Katrine. She hardly touched his arm with her finger-tips, but the air was electric, and he felt the thrill like a pulse of warm blood from head to foot. He did not speak to the driver, but with a manner that made that piratical Neapolitan regard him with a new respect simply ordered him in the sign-language of the town to remain in waiting. A soldier came slouching out of a shop near by wherein he was evidently lounging, took the prescribed gate-fees, and then opened the narrow door. This disclosed a staircase, strait and steep, cut from the living rock, which led upward and to the right.
They climbed the stone stairs without speaking, but at the top the wonderful beauty of the view which burst upon them called from Katrine an involuntary exclamation of surprise and delight. Below them, red-roofed and multi-colored, Naples lay bathed in the strong white light of the southern sun; beyond, marvelously blue and ruffled by a gentle breeze, the waters of the bay flashed and sparkled; and beyond again, farther yet, stood purple Capri and the piled-up southern shore, luminous and mistily azure. To the eastward, brooding and tragic, yet with a thrilling beauty of its own in softly flowing curves and wavering outline, showed Vesuvius, and stupendous as it was, seemed crouching sinister and awful, the incarnation of pitiless power.
Jack focused the glasses, and handed them to Katrine. Then he began to point here and there, showing her the different things of interest visible from the spur of the hill on which they were standing. As she was looking toward the Mole and the New Harbor, suddenly she uttered a little cry of surprise.
"There's the Merle," she said. "I'm sure it is. At least she's flying the American flag."
"Yes," Jack responded. "That's she, fast enough."
"Doesn't it seem like a bit of home to see her down there?" Katrine went on. "I think it was perfectly wonderful that Mr. Drake let you take her this summer."
Jack gave a quick movement of the shoulders, and then set his lips together more firmly.