"Better have none at all than one made out o' cracked tea-kettles," retorted Herrick, who never lost a chance of having a fling against steam.
The pilot, who had been shaking in his shoes at the mishap, now began to hope that it would all end in a laugh; but he was not to escape scot-free, after all. As the Arizona forged ahead, a rotten egg, flung through one of the iron-clad's open ports, hit him full on the forehead, and exploded over his whole face, like a bombshell, making such an object of him as his own father would scarcely have recognized.
An American steamer does not touch at Valetta every day, and the Arizona soon had plenty of visitors. Most of the crew being busy, Frank was "told off" to act as showman, and for the first two days he had more than enough to do. From sunrise to sunset the decks were crowded with sight-seers of all ages and conditions—stiff, wooden-faced soldiers from the garrison; languid ladies, who looked much more at each other's bonnets than at the ship, and seemed to be always sitting down and never getting up; jaunty military officers, with uniforms as trim as their mustaches; huge red-whiskered sailors from the English men-of-war, who kept patting Frank on the head like a child, to his great indignation; and native Maltese, who seemed immensely astonished at all they saw, and chattered over everything like so many parrots. Some of these last mistook the white-painted iron of the engine for wood, and were seen trying to chip off pieces of it with their knives as mementos of the visit.
But when once he was off duty, Austin began to enjoy himself in earnest. There really seemed to be no end to the curious sights of the place—the steep, break-neck streets, almost like paved precipices; the tall, thick-walled, narrow-windowed houses, small fortresses in themselves; the shaven monks, who looked terribly hot in their heavy black robes; the slim, dark-eyed Greeks, with their jaunty red caps, and the gaunt, swarthy Moors scowling from under their huge white turbans; the queer little Maltese boats, with high prows and sterns, quaintly carved and painted; the files of donkeys plodding past under big baskets of fruit, with their bare-footed drivers yelling behind them; the huge forts built by the Knights of St. John (the former owners of Malta), nine thousand of whom had held them for eight months against thirty-five thousand Turks, during the great siege of 1565; and the stately English iron-clads, which seemed to be always exercising their men, or standing out to sea to bang at a floating mark with their big guns for hours together.
But there were other and even more striking sights than these. There was the old city of Citta Vecchia, with its ruined aqueduct. There was the Church of St. Paul (the first built on the island), the ceiling of which is covered with magnificent frescoes, while the floor is one mass of precious stones, worked into portraits of the great men who lay beneath it. There was a cave, said to have sheltered St. Paul after his shipwreck, and containing a fine statue of him. There was the garden of St. Antonio, which, in the glory of the dazzling Southern sunshine, seemed the most beautiful of all. There was the armory of the Knights of St. John, where Frank saw numbers of huge bows, battle-axes, and two-handed swords; quaint old cannon, made of copper tubes covered with coils of rope, which usually burst at the fifth shot; and last, but certainly not least, an enormous helmet, as heavy and almost as big as a wash-tub, said to have been worn by a gigantic knight of the order, who, after defending the gate of Fort St. Elmo single-handed against a whole battalion of Turkish Janizaries, had at length to be blown bodily away with cannon-balls.
Austin did not forget to visit the Catacombs, which fully bore out Herrick's description of them. Far and wide the earth was honey-combed with these gloomy galleries, in which, hundreds of years before, the Christians of Malta had found refuge, while everything above-ground was being wasted with fire and sword by the destroying rage of the Saracens. Crumbling stone crosses, rudely carved names, antique burial-places, seamed the gloomy walls in every direction, while the skulls and bones of men, women, and children lay under foot like shells upon the sea-shore. In the fitful glare of his torch, the long dark robe and white corpse-like face of the monk who acted as guide might well have passed for one of the dead about whom he told so many ghastly stories; and Frank was not sorry to find himself in the bright sunshine once more. But on looking round him, he saw with amazement that he was now right on the opposite side of the mountain, several miles from the spot where he had entered it. And then his monkish guide, by way of a satisfactory wind-up, proceeded to relate, in his most dismal voice, how a gay party of English naval officers descended into this gloomy maze to make a complete exploration of it, and were never seen again.
On the last night of their stay in Malta, the Arizona's officers and crew went in a body to the opera-house (a fine building of gray stone), to hear a young American singer in La Sonnambula. At first the Maltese seemed disposed to find fault with her; but all adverse demonstrations were speedily overwhelmed by the uproarious applause of the English and American sailors. Even when the heroine made a false step in her crossing of the bridge, and tumbled bodily on to the floor of the stage, the gallant blue-jackets applauded as lustily as if this were the best part of the performance, though Jack Dewey afterward observed that "'twas a bad sign of any craft to capsize that way in a calm."
Next morning they were off, but not without a "hitch" or two before starting. At the last moment, the man who had been hurt at Gibraltar had to be sent ashore invalided, and another hand shipped in his place. Then two of the firemen were found to be missing, and turned up just in time to scramble aboard in what the chief engineer called "a strictly unsober condition." One of them, who seemed to be in a quarrelsome humor, was beginning to shout and abuse every one, when Captain Gray suddenly appeared beside him.