It was the midnight following the visit to Miramare when the fiacre in which I had quitted my friend's house was drawn up by its greatly bewildered driver on the quay near the place where the steamer for Venice should be lying. There was no steamer for Venice to be seen. The driver swore a little in the polyglot profanities of his native city, and, descending from his box, went and questioned different lights—blue lights, yellow lights, green lights—to be seen at different points. To a light, they were ignorant, though eloquent, and, to pass the time, we drove up and down the quay, and stopped at the landings of all the steamers that touch at Trieste. It was a snug fiacre enough, but I did not care to spend the night in it, and I urged the driver to further inquiry. A wanderer whom we met declared that it was not the night for the Venice steamer; another admitted that it might be; a third conversed with the driver in low tones, and then leaped upon the box. We drove rapidly away, and before I had, in view of this mysterious proceeding, composed a fitting paragraph for the Fatti Diversi of the Osservatore Triestino, descriptive of the state in which the Guardie di Polizia should find me floating in the bay, exanimate and too clearly the prey of a triste evvenimento, the driver pulled up once more, and now beside a steamer. It was the steamer for Venice, he said, in precisely the tone which he would have used had he driven me directly to it without blundering. It was breathing heavily, and was just about to depart; but even in the hurry of getting on board I could not help noticing that it seemed to have grown a great deal since I had last voyaged in it. There was not a soul to be seen except the mute steward who took my satchel, and, guiding me below into an elegant saloon, instantly left me alone. Here again the steamer was vastly enlarged. These were not the narrow quarters of the Venice steamer, nor was this lamp, shedding a soft light on cushioned seats and panelled doors and wainscotings, the sort of illumination usual in that humble craft. I rang the small silver bell on the long table, and the mute steward appeared.
Was this the steamer for Venice?
Sicuro!
All that I could do in comment was to sit down; and in the mean time the steamer trembled, groaned, choked, cleared its throat, and we were under way.
"The other passengers have all gone to bed, I suppose," I argued acutely, seeing none of them. Nevertheless, I thought it odd, and it seemed a shrewd means of relief to ring the bell, and, pretending drowsiness, to ask the steward which was my state-room.
He replied, with a curious smile, that I could have any of them. Amazed, I yet selected a state-room, and while the steward was gone for the sheets and pillow-cases I occupied my time by opening the doors of all the other staterooms. They were empty.
"Am I the only passenger?" I asked, when he returned, with some anxiety.
"Precisely," he answered.
I could not proceed and ask if he composed the entire crew: it seemed too fearfully probable that he did.
I now suspected that I had taken passage with the Olandese Volante, but there was now nothing in the world for it, except to go to bed, and there, with the accession of a slight sea-sickness, my views of the situation underwent a total change. I had gone down into the Maelstrom with the Ancient Mariner,—I was a Manuscript Found in a Bottle!