The Call of the Blood

by Robert Hichens

He went out onto the terrace and looked around him. The dawn was faint and pale. Wreaths of mist, like smoke trails, hung below him, obscuring the sea. The ghostly cone of Etna loomed into the sky, extricating itself from swaddling bands of clouds which shrouded its lower flanks. The air was chilly upon this height, and the aspect of things was gray and desolate, without temptation, without enchantment, to lure men out from their dwellings.

What could have kept the padrone from his sleep till this hour?

Gaspare shivered a little as he stared over the wall. He was thinking—thinking furiously. Although scarcely educated at all, he was exceedingly sharp-witted, and could read character almost as swiftly and surely as an Arab. At this moment he was busily recalling the book he had been reading for many weeks in Sicily, the book of his padrone's character, written out for him in words, in glances, in gestures, in likes and dislikes, most clearly in actions. Mentally he turned the leaves until he came to the night of the fishing, to the waning of the night, to the journey to the caves, to the dawn when he woke upon the sand and found that the padrone was not beside him. His brown hand tightened on the stick he held, his brown eyes stared with the glittering acuteness of a great bird's at the cloud trails hiding the sea below him—hiding the sea, and all that lay beside the sea.

There was no one on the terrace. But there was a figure for a moment on the mountain-side, leaping downward. The ravine took it and hid it in a dark embrace. Gaspare had found what he sought, a clew to guide him. His hesitation was gone. In his uneducated and intuitive mind there was no longer any room for a doubt. He knew that his padrone was where he had been in that other dawn, when he slipped away from the cave where his companions were sleeping.

Surefooted as a goat, and incited to abnormal activity by a driving spirit within him that throbbed with closely mingled curiosity, jealousy, and anger, Gaspare made short work of the path in the ravine. In a few minutes he came out on to the road by Isola Bella. On the shore was a group of fishermen, all of them friends of his, getting ready their fishing-tackle, and hauling down the boats to the gray sea for the morning's work. Some of them hailed him, but he took no notice, only pulled his soft hat down sideways over his cheek, and hurried on in the direction of Messina, keeping to the left side of the road and away from the shore, till he gained the summit of the hill from which the Caffè Berardi and the caves were visible. There he stopped for a moment and looked down. He saw no one upon the shore, but at some distance upon the sea there was a black dot, a fishing-boat. It was stationary. Gaspare knew that its occupant must be hauling in his net.

"Salvatore is out then!" he muttered to himself, as he turned aside from the road onto the promontory, which was connected by the black wall of rock with the land where stood the house of the sirens. This wall, forbidding though it was, and descending sheer into the deep sea on either side, had no terrors for him. He dropped down to it with a sort of skilful carelessness, then squatted on a stone, and quickly unlaced his mountain boots, pulled his stockings off, slung them with the boots round his neck, and stood up on his bare feet. Then, balancing himself with his out-stretched arms, he stepped boldly upon the wall. It was very narrow. The sea surged through it. There was not space on it to walk straight-footed, even with only one foot at a time upon the rock. Gaspare was obliged to plant his feet sideways, the toes and heels pointing to the sea on either hand. But the length of the wall was short, and he went across it almost as quickly as if he had been walking upon the road. Heights and depths had no terrors for him in his confident youth. And he had been bred up among the rocks, and was a familiar friend of the sea. A drop into it would have only meant a morning bath. Having gained the farther side, he put on his stockings and boots, grasped his stick, and began to climb upward through the thickly growing trees towards the house of the sirens. His instinct had told him upon the terrace that the padrone was there. Uneducated people have often marvellously retentive memories for the things of every-day life. Gaspare remembered the padrone's question about the little light beside the sea, his answer to it, the way in which the padrone had looked towards the trees when, in the dawn, they stood upon the summit of the hill and he pointed out the caves where they were going to sleep. He remembered, too, from what direction the padrone came towards the caffè when the sun was up—and he knew.

As he drew near to the cottage he walked carefully, though still swiftly, but when he reached it he paused, bent forward his head, and listened. He was in the tangle of coarse grass that grew right up to the north wall of the cottage, and close to the angle which hid from him the sea-side and the cottage door. At first he heard nothing except the faint murmur of the sea upon the rocks. His stillness now was as complete as had been his previous activity, and in the one he was as assured as in the other. Some five minutes passed. Again and again, with a measured monotony, came to him the regular lisp of the waves. The grass rustled against his legs as the little wind of morning pushed its way through it gently, and a bird chirped above his head in the olive-trees and was answered by another bird. And just then, as if in reply to the voices of the birds, he heard the sound of human voices. They were distant and faint almost as the lisp of the sea, and were surely coming towards him from the sea.

When Gaspare realized that the speakers were not in the cottage he crept round the angle of the wall, slipped across the open space that fronted the cottage door, and, gaining the trees, stood still in almost exactly the place where Maurice had stood when he watched Maddalena in the dawn.

The voices sounded again and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to sing a peasant song, "Zampagnaro."

At the end of the verse there was an imitation of the ceramella by the voice, humming, or rather whining, bouche fermée. As it ceased a man's voice said: