night is dark and some of those smart puffs will soon
be like little squalls. Full and by. Hug
the land, for there are no more reefs before Scalea.
If you do not get aground on what you can see in Calabria,
you will not get aground at all, says the old proverb.
Briskly over two or three miles to the next point,
and the breeze is gone again. While she is still
forging ahead out go the sweeps, six or eight of them,
and the men throw themselves forward over the long
slender loom, as they stand. Half an hour to
row, or more perhaps. Down helm, as you meet the
next puff, and the good felucca heels over a little.
And so through the night, the breeze freshening before
the rising sun to die away in the first hot morning
hours, just as you are abreast of Camerota. L’Infresco
Point is ahead, not three miles away. It is of
no use to row, for the breeze will come up before
long and save you the trouble. But the sea is
white and motionless. Far in the offing a Sicilian
schooner and a couple of clumsy “martinganes”—there
is no proper English name for the craft—are
lying becalmed, with hanging sails. The men on
board the felucca watch them and the sea. There
is a shadow on the white, hazy horizon, then a streak,
then a broad dark blue band. The schooner braces
her top-sail yard and gets her main sheet aft.
The martinganes flatten in their jibs along their
high steeving bowsprits and jib-booms. Shift
your sheets, too, now, for the wind is coming.
Past L’Infresco with its lovely harbour of refuge,
lonely as a bay in a desert island, its silent shade
and its ancient spring. The wind is south by west
at first, but it will go round in an hour or two,
and before noon you will make Scalea—stand
out for the reef, the only one in Calabria—with
a stern breeze. You have passed the most beautiful
spot on the beautiful Italian coast, without seeing
it. There, between the island of Dino and the
cape lies San Nicola, with its grand deserted tower,
its mighty cliffs, its deep, safe bay and its velvet
sand. What matter? The wind is fair and
you are for Calabria with twenty tons of macaroni from
Amalfi. There is no time to be lost, either,
for you will probably come home in ballast. Past
Scalea, then, where tradition says that Judas Iscariot
was born and bred and did his first murder. Right
ahead is the sharp point of the Diamante, beyond that
low shore where the cane brake grows to within fifty
yards of the sea. Now you have run past the little
cape, and are abreast of the beach. Down mainsail—down
jib—down foresail. Let go the anchor
while she forges, eight to nine lengths from the land,
and let her swing round, stern to the sand. Clear
away the dingy and launch her from amidships, and
send a line ashore. Overboard with everything
now, for beaching, capstan, chocks and all—the
swell will wash them in. As the keel grates on
the pebbles, the men jump into the water from the
high stern and catch the drifting wood. Some plant
the capstan, others pass the long hemp cable and reeve