Chapter Twenty.
Valetta—A Glimpse of the Pirate.
Malta lay basking on the bright blue ocean, looking very white and very hot under the scorching rays of a burning sun, as, early in the afternoon, we stood towards the entrance of the harbour of Valetta. Passing St. Elmo Castle on our right, and Fort Ricasoli on our left, whose numberless guns looked frowning down upon us, as if ready, at a moment’s notice, to annihilate any enemy daring to enter with an exhibition of hostile intent, we ran up that magnificent inlet called the Grand Harbour.
Malta Harbour has been so often described, that my readers will not thank me for another elaborate drawing. Only, let them picture to themselves a gulf from three to four hundred yards across, with several deep inlets full of shipping, and on every conspicuous point, on all sides, white batteries of hewn stone, of various heights, some flush with the water, others rising in tiers one above another, with huge black guns grinning out of them, the whole crowned with flat-roofed barracks, and palaces and churches and steeples and towers, with a blue sky overhead, and blue water below, covered with oriental-looking boats, and lateen-rigged craft, with high-pointed triangular sails of snowy whiteness, and boatmen in gayly-coloured scarfs and caps, and men-of-war, and merchant-vessels—and a very tolerable idea will be formed of the place.
Valetta itself, the capital, stands on a hog’s back, a narrow but high neck of land, dividing the Grand Harbour from the quarantine harbour, called, also, Marsa Muceit. The chief streets run in parallel lines along the said hog’s back, and they are intersected by others, which run up and down its steep sides. In some parts they are so steep that flights of steps take the place of the carriage-way. The best known of these steps are the Nix Mangiari Stairs, so-called from the troops of little beggars who infest them, and assure all passers-by that they have had nothing to eat for six days. “Oh, signori, me no fader no moder; me nix mangiari seis journi!” An assertion which their fat cheeks and obese little figures most undeniably contradict. Few people will forget those steep steps who have had to toil to the top of them on a sweltering day, not one, but three or four times, perchance; nor will those noisy, lazy, dirty beggars—those sights most foul—those odours most sickening—fade from his memory.
We ran up the harbour and dropped our anchor not far from the chief landing-place, abreast of Nix Mangiari Steps. There were several men-of-war in the harbour. Among them was our old friend the “Trident.”
“If Piper sees us, we shall soon have him on board to tell us all the news,” observed Porpoise. “I don’t think Master Mite will forget us, either, if he can manage to come. Our good things, in the way of eating and drinking, made no slight impression on his mind, whatever he may have thought of us as individuals. If he has an opportunity, that little fellow will distinguish himself.”
While stowing sails, the rest of the party having gone below to prepare for a visit to the shore, my eye, as it ranged round the harbour, fell on the sails of a Greek brig, which was just then standing out of the galley port. I looked at her attentively, and then pointed her out to Snow, who was so earnest in seeing that his mainsail was stowed in the smoothest of skins, that he had not observed her.
“What do you think of her?” said I.
“Why, sir, if she isn’t that rascally craft which attacked us, she is as like her as one marlinspike is to another!” he exclaimed, slapping his hand on his thigh. “I’ll be hanged but what I believe it is her, and no mistake about it.”