There was evidently no sordid motive in this; for when I came near, she made no allusion to a bargain, but said I had chosen a place where there was not sufficient shade. I asked her a few questions about the lava, but got only vague answers. What conversation passed was a random kind of talk about the difference of Italy and foreign countries. It was evident that in the girl's eyes "Napoli"—which she pronounced with magnificent emphasis—was the only place in the world worth admiring. She had seen no other. The people, however, were bad—very bad. I thought, upon this observation, that something like a story was coming; but the throat and face of the girl only darkened with a rush of blood, and she grew utterly silent. Suddenly she arranged her lava hastily in her basket, started up, leaving a piece which I had been holding in my hand, and had not paid for, and ran away down the street. I naturally ran after her to pay for what I had bought; but she turned round with flushed cheek and flashing eyes; and while I was indulging in the hope of being able to explain my intentions, I felt a blow on my breast from a stone lanched with no weak hand; and before I had time to recover from my surprise, the girl had disappeared.
A curious termination to an interview which I had begun to persuade myself had something of a romantic character! I rubbed my thorax, tried to laugh at the little slut's vivacity, but could not get rid of the uneasy annoyance peculiar to misunderstood people. Perhaps I had been taken for a robber—perhaps something I had said in my broken Italian had been thought insulting. I grew quite morose; thought of nothing else all the afternoon; was set down as an ill-tempered fellow at dinner; and on retiring to bed, could not help perpetually stating this question—"Why should that pretty girl, toward whom my heart had expanded, have left me in so abrupt a manner; and on my endeavoring to restore her property, have made a target of me?" All night, as I slept, I felt as if a hot coal were lying on my breast; and the place, indeed, was black and blue in the morning.
An excursion had been proposed to Vesuvius, and we started at three in the afternoon—myself, four Americans, with Mr. Jenkins and his wife—all crowded into what, I believe, is called a corricolo. The sea, along the brink of which we went, was still stormy, and the waves washed with a slushing noise up into the very street. The drive was beautiful to Portici, the white houses and vine-wreathed porticoes of which I noticed with pleasure. At Portici, after some wrangling in the house of the guide, we were transferred to horses and donkeys; and off we went, first up a hot lane between stone walls, and then along a fine paved road. The party was merry, and not unpicturesque, but out of character with the scene. Not one of us was subdued by the tranquil beauty of the little landscapes, the bright green nooks that opened here and there. Our temperaments were still too northern. We were not yet soothed down by the sunny sky and balmy air of Italy; and got stared at in consequence with contemptuous curiosity by the languid peasants in the fields.
At length a zig-zag road commenced, and up we went, turning round ever and anon to view the expanding bay, softened down into apparent calm by distance. Green gullies and ravines of lava began to be intermingled; but tranquil observation was soon interrupted by tremendous gusts of wind that came roaring down the sides of the mountain, and enveloped us in whirlwinds of dust, sometimes mingled with pebbles, at every turn of the road. It was hard work to get on; and we were glad enough to reach the Hermitage and Observatory, where we tossed off a glass of Lachryma Christi to restore us.
The rest of the road was along a narrow ridge leading to the foot of the great black cone. On either side were gullies of green, and beyond great red fields of lava. It was not remarkably safe riding, and by no means commodious. Sometimes one's nose touched the horse's or ass's neck; sometimes the back of one's head was whisked by the tail. It was a sort of rocking-horse motion. But we arrived safe at the dismounting-place; and, I must confess, looked rather dismayed at the desperately steep cone up which we were bound to scramble. But in traveling, "on, on," is the word; so on we went, stumbling up through the triturated and block lava, as if Fame, or something else equally valuable, had been at the summit. Mrs. Jenkins was in an open palanquin, borne by eight men, who grunted, staggered, crawled up or slid back, shouted, laughed, and belabored one another with their climbing-poles, while the undaunted lady sat as coolly as in her drawing-room at home, making observations on the scenery, which we could scarcely hear, and were too breathless to answer.
In about an hour we neared the summit, and got under a vast canopy of sulphurous smoke, which, blown by the furious wind, rolled grim and black over the serrated edge, stretched its impenetrable mass between us and the sky, and then swooped down toward the bay, and dispersed in a vast mist. Most parts of the plain, too, were covered with a low ground-fog. It was a grand sight as we paused and looked back before the last effort. The whole sweep of the bay was visible from Sorrento to Baia, together with the islands, scattered like giant sentinels at the mouth; but all looked strange and fantastic through the sulphurous vapor. The sun was setting in a bath of blood and gold, just behind a straight line of ebony clouds with a sharp rim, like a wall of black marble. The white houses on the slopes of Castel à Mare were already looking ghastly in the twilight.
Our temples throbbed with fatigue; but the guide cried "Forward," and we soon came to the most disagreeable part of the business. The smoke was forced by the wind in a kind of cascade some fifty yards down the declivity, and as soon as we got into it an awful sense of suffocation came on. The guide swore, and some of us talked of retreating. But the majority were for persevering; and, panting and coughing, we dashed upward, reached the summit, got into the midst of a fearful torrent of black smoke, like that which is vomited by a steamer's funnel, and staggered giddily about seeking which way to go. At this moment a slight form glanced toward us, said a few words to the guide, and presently we were running to the left along black and dizzy precipices, until suddenly we emerged from the volcanic vapor, and were in full view at the same time of the plain and the sea, and of all the wonders of Vesuvius.
The girl whose acquaintance I had made in so strange a manner had come to the assistance of the guide, and told him what direction to take in order soonest to escape from the smoke. I spoke to her; but although she recognized me, I think, she did not, or would not remember our former interview. The idea suggested itself that she was touched in her intellect, so I made no farther allusion to the subject. It was evident the guide knew her, and had confidence in her. He asked her advice about the path which it would be advisable to follow; and obeyed her directions implicitly. "Who is that?" I whispered. "It is Ghita, the Volcano-girl," he replied in English, before repeating the Italian name, which might be translated, the "Daughter of the Volcano." I had no time for further inquiries. We were once more in motion, and had enough to do to keep our footing on the rough lava in the teeth of as furious a blast as ever I remember encountering. It would have been dangerous to stand even near a precipice.
It was a marvelous scene that vast black valley with its lake of fire at the bottom—its cone of fire on one hand. The discharges were constant, and had something appalling in their sound. We were almost too much excited for observation. Now we looked at the cone of green and gold that sank and rose, faded and brightened, smoked or flamed; then at the seething lake; then at the strong mountains of lava; then at the burning fissures that yawned around. There were yet some remnants of day—a gloomy twilight at least revealed the jagged rim of the valley. Down we went—down, down to the very edge of the boiling caldron of melted lava, that rolled its huge waves toward the black shore, waves whose foam and spray were fire and flame! An eruption evidently was preparing; and soon indeed took place. We missed the sight; but what we now saw was grand enough. A troop of heavy black clouds was hurrying athwart the sky, showing the stars ever and anon between "like a swarm of golden bees." The wind roared and bellowed among the lava-gullies, while the cone discharged its blocks of burning lava, or its showers of red sparks, with a boom like that of a park of artillery.
A thousand travelers may witness and describe the scene, but it can never be hackneyed or vulgar. The volcano-girl, evidently familiar with every changing aspect, crept to my side, as I stood apart wrapt in silent admiration and wonder, and I caught her examining the expression of my face as it was revealed by the dismal glare of the burning lake. "E bellissima!" she whispered in a husky voice, pressing close to my side, and trembling like a leaf, not with present fear, but manifestly in memory of some dreadful event. We were friends from that moment, and she constituted herself my especial guide, running before me to choose the surest paths, giving me her delicate little hand, and showing, in fact, all possible willingness to make up our little quarrel, if she retained any remembrance of it.