After the Aquarium, Jerry turned a deaf ear to the alluring speeches of the guide, the burden of whose song was all of curiosities unseen and of pleasures untasted. He paid the importunate manikin, and made his way back to the Merle. The truth was that he had seen something which thoroughly pleased him, and after that it was impossible to return to the perfunctory seeing of regulation sights which really did not take hold of him in the least.
Before the first week was ended, Jerry had visited Pompeii and Baiæ, and what was to be seen of Herculaneum. He had made some purchases; and then he began to wait about, ashore or aboard, for Jack. That gentleman had written no response to Tab's letter announcing the arrival of the Merle at Naples, and Jerry could only think of him as so absorbed in his wooing as to have forgotten all about his friend. Some not unnatural jealousy began to ferment in his mind, and did not add to his comfort. By the advice of Gonzague he took the market-boat, and setting out early one morning he sailed with a couple of the men across the bay to Capri, where he passed the day. The only thing which cheered him on his lonely expedition was a tarantella, which was danced for his diversion by a romantic-looking raggaza, with black eyes and short petticoats. The moonlight sail back would have pleased him more had it not been necessary to keep the men rowing for two thirds of the way. On the whole, Jerry could find nothing to please him on land or sea.
The major part of the next week he had spent stretched out in a cane chaise longue in the cockpit, drinking iced sangaree and reading Didron's Artémise. He had a fly stretched over the awning for increased coolness, and the "dusters" put up to shut out the glare from the water; there, like some melancholy monarch beneath his canopy, he read, dozed, and grumbled—without even the satisfaction of any fit audience—from morning to sundown.
In the cool of the evening he usually went ashore, and one night he was strolling along the water-front, stick in hand and his Panama set well back on his head. As he passed the Hôtel du Vesuve, wondering when Jack would arrive, a small figure moved quickly in front of him and bowed. At first he was startled, but almost instantly he saw that it was the valet de place who had gone about with him in the early days of his stay at Naples.
"Hello," said Jerry in surprise, yet not without a feeling of satisfaction at finding even this apology for a companion.
"Buon' sera, signor," responded the little man vivaciously. "How do? You tek-a de night air? É verament' un' bellissima notte. It mek-a cool, eh?"
And he waved his arms expressively.
He might have been thirty or thirty-five, and had coarse black hair, with fiery eyes. He was not ill-looking, but his clothes were hopelessly threadbare and his face pinched. He bore dark circles under his eyes, and was in no way markedly different from others of his numerous and futile class, who, with a smattering of French, German, or English, struggle desperately for a livelihood by acting, not always very virtuously, as guides for traveling forestieri.