I do not know why it should have been so surprising to hear the boatman who rowed us to the steamer’s anchorage speak English; but, after his harsh Genoese profanity in getting his boat into open water, it was the last thing we expected from him.  It had somehow the effect of a furious beast addressing you in your native tongue, and telling you it was “Wary poordy wedder;” and it made us cling to his good-nature with the trembling solicitude of Little Red-Riding-Hood, when she begins to have the first faint suspicions of her grandmother.  However, our boatman was no wild beast, but took our six cents of buonamano with the base servility of a Christian man, when he had put our luggage in the cabin of the steamer.  I wonder how he should have known us for Americans?  He did so know us, and said he had been at New York in better days, when he voyaged upon higher seas than those he now navigated.

On board, we watched with compassion an old gentleman in the cabin making a hearty meal of sardines and fruit-pie, and I asked him if he had ever been at sea.  No, he said.  I could have wept over that innocent old gentleman’s childlike confidence of appetite, and guileless trust of the deep.

We went on deck, where one of the gentle beings of our party declared that she would remain as long as Genoa was in sight; and to tell the truth, the scene was worthy of the promised devotion.  There, in a half-circle before us, blazed the lights of the quay; above these twinkled the lamps of the steep streets and climbing palaces; over and behind all hung the darkness on the heights,—­a sable cloud dotted with ruddy points of flame burning in the windows of invisible houses.

  “Merrily did we drop”

down the bay, and presently caught the heavy swell of the open sea.  The other gentle being of our party then clutched my shoulder with a dreadful shudder, and after gasping, “O Mr. Scribbler, why will the ship roll so?” was meekly hurried below by her sister, who did not return for a last glimpse of Genoa the Proud.

In a moment heaven’s sweet pity flapped away as with the sea-gull’s wings, and I too felt that there was no help for it, and that I must go and lie down in the cabin.  With anguished eyes I beheld upon the shelf opposite to mine the innocent old gentleman who had lately supped so confidently on sardines and fruit-pie.  He lay upon his back, groaning softly to himself.

VI.

BY SEA FROM GENOA TO NAPLES.

I.