At last, on steering between the two rocky hills, whose barren masses rise on either side at the mouth of this arm of the Narenta like twin pillars of Hercules, a tremendous scene burst upon us. Just opposite to where the river widened into the sea, towered before us—its limestone crags and boulders up-piled and jumbled in cataclysmic confusion—a small desolate island, a fit abode for nothing unless it were departed spirits of the evil. The rays of a pale ominous sunset fell upon these cadaverous rocks and flooded them with spectral light. On either side of the island the sea shone with abnormal emerald lustre; but what made the brilliance of the foreground so unearthly, was the unutterable darkness of all behind. The rocky island rose like a phantom against a sky as black as night.
The question for us was whether there would be time to round the nose of rock to the left of the Narenta mouth, and cross a narrow arm of green sea to a promontory where we might obtain shelter, before the impending hurricane came down on us.
The sailors thought it possible, and with set teeth laboured at the oars as for grim life. But the black pall of clouds that darkened the western hemisphere drew nearer and nearer; the white sea-mews swept wildly and more wildly hither and thither against the face of coming night, shrieking weirdly like the Banshees of coming doom. The wind and thunder roared louder in our ears, and a thin snowy line of surf stretching along the emerald horizon, swept like a charge of cavalry across the intervening fields of sea—but now, so treacherously smooth!—and dashed down upon our little craft.
The night was already upon us; the brilliant beams of sunset were suddenly transformed, first into darkness, and then into the lurid twilight of an eclipse which lit up our men’s faces with a pale ashy grey, ghastly to look upon. These hardy descendants of corsairs seemed really cowed, and shouted to us ‘Pray to God, signori! Pray to God! La Fortuna è rotta!’
The storm had burst with a vengeance. The wind rose to a hurricane. The surf and tempest struck our boat and beat her head round. It was in vain that the men struggled at the oars; we were borne back, and swept along helpless as a log in a torrent. We were driven towards the mouth of the Narenta which we had left, and I thought every moment we should have been dashed against the rocks; but Dame Fortune was merciful to us, and notwithstanding that the men lost all command of the vessel, we rounded the rocky headland, and found ourselves in comparatively sheltered waters where oars were again available, so that we were presently anchored near another small Narentan vessel in smoother waters—though even the river was one sheet of foam. It now began to rain in torrents beyond all our experience; so we covered ourselves with our macintoshes, and lay down in the bottom of our boat, resolved not to emerge till the hurricane should have abated somewhat of its fury. But hardly were we settled, when a tremendous clap of thunder rent the air, followed by a series of sharp blows which made us start to our feet, when we found that hailstones varying in size from a bullet to a walnut, and in shape like Tangerine oranges,[319] were rattling about our heads. With our helmet hats on, and under cover of our macintoshes, we avoided being actually bruised, but the thunder and lightning that accompanied the hail were still more terrific. The forked lightning literally played around our craft, and it seemed that it must be struck; the thunder was such as we had neither of us heard the like of before. For a quarter of an hour we endured the full brunt of this celestial cannonade, and then the storm passed away as suddenly as it had come, and rolled on among the more inland ranges of the Dinaric Alps, which the lightning kept throwing into vivid and unexpected reliefs behind us; while in front and overhead, sky and rocks and sea were illumined with the renewed splendour of sunset, and the surface of the troubled Narenta calmed down into its wonted serenity.
But it was a storm such as one does not meet with twice in a life-time; it was a fit initiation into this iron-bound coastland, with its earthquakes and subterranean thunders—the cavernous home of winds and tempests—the last refuge of piratic races.
We now renewed our voyage, and crossing a narrow arm of sea, landed in a sheltered cove, where we took refuge in a spacious stone house, the abode of a Dalmatian Family-community, hoping for the scirocco to subside, in order to be able to pursue our course up the Stagno. We were shown into the common eating and cooking room, a spacious chamber on the ground-floor, where the family gathered round us; and the men, when they heard that we were English, at once claimed us as brothers, and entered into a most friendly conversation. ‘We like the English,’ said one; ‘we know your greatness on the sea, and we too are a nation of seamen; England and Dalmatia!—there are no sailors but in your country and ours!’ Another of the men had been to London and Plymouth, and he and the others aired a string of English phrases with a decidedly nautical flavour, amongst which we detected ‘Or’ right,’ ‘cup o’ tea,’ ‘grog,’ ‘haul up,’ ‘ease her;’ and other expressions proving their entente cordiale with ‘Jack.’ About nine in the evening the woman-kind, the children, and some of the men, betook themselves to sleeping chambers above, and we were shown a bed in the spacious hall below, on whose floor slept our seamen and some of the inmates. But the stuffiness was so suffocating within, that I preferred the gnats and night air without; and finding a convenient rock on which to pillow my head, imitated the example of Jacob.
About midnight the adverse wind fell, and I being, by now, sufficiently disillusioned of patriarchal repose, hastened to rouse L⸺ and our men, and we were again on our way before 1 A.M., the wind shifting enough to enable us every now and then to use our sail. We steered along the Canale di Stagno piccolo, passing in the dark the inlet in which the Turkish harbour of Klek is situate. About 8 A.M. we landed at Luka, on the peninsula of Sabbioncello, and making our way on foot across the isthmus, entered the old town of Stagno by a gateway through its high machicolated Venetian walls. It was a small friendly place with clean narrow streets, and many old stone palaces of the citizen nobility with stone escutcheons over their doors, quaint rope mouldings and carved corbels under the windows, some of which were of Venetian-Gothic style. Other houses, whose owners probably could lay no claim to coats of arms, displayed over their doorways medallions on which I.H.S. was engraved in a variety of ornamental forms. In the Piazza just inside the gate by which we entered lay an old font with many noble shields upon it, and in the city wall opposite was a Renaissance fountain with a sixteenth-century date upon it. Stagno was once a port of the Bosnian kings, till sold by one of them to Ragusa at the end of the fourteenth century.
