Читать книгу The Admiral - Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen - Страница 11

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ON the next day, having taken in all manner of supplies to our complete satisfaction, and there not being wind enough to take us out, as was too obvious even for the Governor to protest, the Admiral expressed his desire to see the remains of ancient Syracuse, more particularly those parts connected with the siege, and the surrender of the Athenians, which last shocked him very much. “To surrender,” he said, “is to lose all your men and none of the enemy’s, to give him much larger stores of arms and ammunition. To surrender is shameful; to die fighting against insuperable odds is the finest kind of death. If those Athenians had gone on fighting their way, though it might have cost the Syracusans only one man for their two, or one man for their three, depend upon it some of them would have got through to the friendly city of Catania.”[2]

[2] Catana was the ancient name.

In the morning the Governor had arranged that we were to visit the river Anapo, the only place, it is said, where the papyrus used for the books of antiquity continues to grow in a natural state, taking on our way the few stones which mark the position near which the Athenians met their last defeat.

We had to rise betimes to do this, but the Governor explained that at Syracuse there was always what he called a little storm in the afternoon. The Admiral replied that he did not imagine that any storm which they could have in that bay would be like to frighten his Majesty’s sailors, but if it came he should be glad to oblige the Governor by sailing out on it to get a day nearer to those rascally French.

Quite early in the morning, before one breakfasts in England, we rowed across the Great Port in the Admiral’s barge to the low-lying mouth of the river. The Admiral made me coxswain for the day, out of the goodness of his heart, I know, that Will should have a companion. We could not enter the river for a bar with only a few inches of water on it; but we were met by a very comical sight, for no sooner had we grounded a few feet off the land than a mounted orderly came on board. He had on enormous top boots and spurs, and a kind of sabre a great deal too large for him, and he was all belts, and had on his head the most wonderful kind of ancient Roman helmet, with a huge brass cockscomb and the most extravagant plumes of horsehair I have ever seen, calling to mind the pictures of Sir William Johnson’s Indian braves during the late war in America. But for all this he was mounted, not on his horse, which he might very well have ridden out to us, but sitting a-straddle on the left shoulder of a tall fisherman, who threw him aboard with so little ceremony that, if he had not been caught by our men, he would surely have fallen over his sabre and broken it.

He pointed out on the shore a number of lumbering coaches, the upper parts of which were mostly all glass. Some of these, he told us, were empty, and for us, because the part of the river below the ancient bridge (which the chaplain said was built by the Athenians) had become too choked even for the river boats, which were to meet us at that point. It being summer, he assured us that the coaches would not become quagmired in doing this journey, which was only so many hundred yards. The Governor, it appeared, did not like salt water well enough to adventure the row across the bay, but had driven round in his coach. There were fishermen ready, he said in conclusion, to carry the English officers ashore.

After asking the Admiral’s leave, he then made signs, and one of the inarticulate noises with which the Italians express much; and a number of fishermen, pretty well naked except for their short shirts and hanging red caps, rushed into the water to the side of the barge. But our English seamen were too quick for them, and, leaping overboard, carried the Admiral and the captains who were with him in true English humper-back style, though Will obtained the Admiral’s permission for him and me to try this queer shoulder-riding, which is not to be commended above once.

We noticed that the officer who had come out to the Admiral from the Governor, remounted with trepidation. No sooner were we ashore than the Governor, with his principal officers, stepping down from their coaches, advanced to meet us with bows which took us some trouble to return with sufficient stooping. We feared to heel over. They had a party of ladies with them, as we could see, though we were not presented to them until we reached the boats which were to take us up the river.

Before we started, the Governor asked us if we would make a slight detour now to see the Temple of Jupiter, which the Admiral had mentioned as one of the spots he desired most to investigate. The Admiral said that he was in the Governor’s hands, and the coaches therefore turned off along what they call a road in Sicily, but which is no better than a ploughed field. Our officer with the plumes, who seemed a good fellow, assured Will and myself, who were with him of the party in the first coach, that this was a good country road, and that we were fortunate in not having to bump over broken rock.

When we came up with the ladies, I must say we were most agreeably astonished, for the boats, which had the same high noses as the barca in which Will and I had adventured the night before, only were in every way lighter and longer, were spread with rich cloths, and had fine silken canopies. The ladies, too, being no longer in their ancestral state dresses, but in robes of thin silk, mostly the thin white which the Italians know so well how to wear, were a most beautiful sight, for they were all young, and might have been chosen for their appearance.

Among the number was Donna Rusidda, and it was arranged, with evident design, that Will should have a place by her.

Seldom have I seen so gracious a sight as that procession presented.

I took particular note of this when we reached the first bed of the Egyptian papyrus, which grows somewhat after the manner of the palmetto, with branching stems, tufted at the tops. But there is this difference between it and the palmetto—that its leaves, instead of being papery, are like horses’ tails, made of the greenest grass, each blade being as round as twine. They make a pleasant whispering noise, if there is a wind ever so light, and they are five, ten, and fifteen feet high. There is a bend in the river where the bed begins, so I caught sight of the next barca almost broadside, as she swung round; and the effect was, I say, very beautiful, for their deck cloths and their silk canopies were of the Governor’s colours, crimson edged with silver and very rich facings, and these contrasted with the green of the papyrus on the banks, which almost arched over our heads, so narrow was the waterway. And I am sure that, to those in the other barcas, the contrast of the white dresses of the ladies and the bright blue uniforms of His Majesty’s officers, made a splendid bouquet of colour.

The Admiral sat with the Governor on a kind of little dais raised on the stern, the like of which the other boats had not. Mr. Comyn was no longer with him for interpreting, since Thucydides tells us nothing about fêtes on the Anapo with court ladies. He was learned in the classics, Mr. Comyn, and the Admiral was always much interested to hear what the classics had to say about this or the other spot, famous in Greek or Roman history, when we came to it. The Admiral and the Governor were surrounded by the most beautiful of the ladies, Will sitting close to the Admiral’s right hand to interpret, as occasion arose, and with Donna Rusidda on his right hand. She looked as beautiful as an angel in her filmy white robes, which brought out the marvellous clearness of her cheeks and the soulfulness of her eyes. Moreover, leaning against the cushioned side of a boat is a test whether a lady have grace or not, in which she came out uncommon well.

The Admiral was in high spirits, leaning out of the boat to try and gather a papyrus stalk (it was from the stalk that the ancients got their paper), and laughing like a boy when his arm, in its best State uniform, was dragged under water. Presently he spied with that eye of his, which took in every object of a view at a single glance, a fine green and blue lizard sitting on a papyrus stalk outlined against the sky. The chaplain, who was in the middle of the boat, would have it—I know not if he was right—that this was the famous chameleon.

“Catch him, Trinder,” said the Admiral, and I made up my mind to have him if I had to tumble into the water for it (it was good weather for dipping in); but the boatman, seeing what I was going to do, knocked the stalk away with his oar, jabbering like a monkey, and my lizard was gone. The Governor spoke to him sharply in Sicilian, and turning to Will, made a long apology in Italian for him to translate to the Admiral, which was to the effect that this lizard had the evil eye, or something of the sort, and it was most unlucky to anger it. The Admiral gave one of his hearty laughs, and the incident passed off; but presently, as we were passing right through a thick tuft, Will said to me, “There is another: you catch him. I’ll stop the boatman.”

The long barca glided swishing under the overhanging papyrus to where the great lizard lay shamming sleep against the stalk. The boatman saw us looking, and raised his oar again. Quick as lightning, Will caught it, and was ready to strike the man or seize him by the throat as occasion was; but another person had seen it, and a stern voice came from the dais—“Mr. Hardres!”

Will looked back, still holding the oar. The Admiral did not use this name in ordinary.

“We don’t want to carry any ill fortune with us while we are trying to fight the French.”

Will dropped the oar and saluted; and the Admiral, smiling again, said we might not be able to get enough wind even to frighten the Governor, with the chaplain’s chameleon on board. But Donna Rusidda arched her eyebrows and said to Will,—

“We of the Favara have lasted six centuries, and we have always defied Fate.”

To which Will replied, “Don Comyn there, our padre, as you would call him, says he believes the Admiral is like the Roman Sylla—that there is no name by which he would so gladly be called as Faustus, the favourite of the Gods.”

We were not over long in the river Anapo, I believe, because the Governor would have us see the fountain of Cyané, from which the river named after it, the Cyano, derives its clear, plentiful water. The tributary was decidedly deeper than the river, and here and there the overarching clumps—I might almost speak of them as an avenue, for they sometimes met above our heads—broke off for a while, and the banks would be bordered with sedges of the leaves of the yellow iris, which blossoms here in great abundance in the spring. So Donna Rusidda informed Will. We quite missed the rustle of the papyrus against our canopy when we came to these open spots, though I daresay the boatmen were glad enough, for they must have impeded the way of the boat very much.

The fountain was no great distance up—perhaps a mile or so, and it certainly was a natural curiosity. It was the shape of the bowl of an egg-cup, and the Governor claimed that it was fifty feet deep; and I dare swear it was over thirty, though one could see every pebble on the bottom, and see great mullet, looking quite blue, at what they considered a safe depth from the attentions of man. It was curious to see these sea fish running up to half a dozen pounds’ weight so far from the sea, in water fresh from the fountain head, and icy cold. I was rather thankful that Will had his Donna Rusidda beside him, for he would have been itching to slip out of his clothes somehow, and dive for the stones, which looked like turquoises, at the bottom of the spring. The prospect of groping about with his eyes open under thirty or forty feet of water, clearer than glass, would have been irresistible.

As it was, he did nothing worse to shock the Governor than attempt to drink some of the same water during the al fresco banquet held, while the barcas were moored to the low papyrus bushes round the fountain or, as I should call it, the spring, which was the only place on the whole river where there was room for two or three boats together.

Whether his Excellency considered all water unwholesome, or that Will’s rushing to drink it in place of wine was a reflection on his hospitality, did not appear. I do not know when I have seen such a scene, which in a different way reminded me of the pictures of a certain Watteau captured by my Lord Eastry in one of his prizes, and now hanging in Will’s gallery; though I do not maintain that the Governor’s ladies, beautiful and appropriate as their light summer robes were, approached the Watteau ladies in elegance of costume. But, on the other hand, the prim fountain with Diana in the centre, supported by two dolphins, with their lips curled and their tails plaited, certainly did not come up to our clear pool, as deep as many a house is high, carrying on its bosom three or four great barcas, hanging with crimson and silver, and ringed all round by overhanging palmetto-like clumps of the feathery papyrus of old Egypt. Nor, I confess, do the men in Monsieur Watteau’s pictures, who are generally dancing, come up to men like Captain Troubridge and Captain Berry, in the uniform of His Majesty’s Navy. And every little detail, each feather in the plumes of the papyrus, each jewel, every burnished nail within reflecting distance of the water, was mirrored as clearly as the bright blue uniforms and shining epaulettes of His Majesty’s officers, and the great masses of crimson in the boat-hangings. We had music, too, from the Governor’s—well, I call them lute-players—especially brought over from Naples, wearing the old doublet and hose, crimson and silver liveries of the Governor’s family, which their forerunners had worn when Tommaso de Vigilia painted them three centuries before in the pictures hanging in the Governor’s palace. I could believe that these were the same liveries, for in Sicily servants’ fête-liveries are not made for them, but made for the household, and handed on from one servant to another, as a saddle from horse to horse.

I don’t know how long the banquet may have lasted, there was such profusion of pastrycooks’ viands and fruits and wines. The Governor looked as if he expected Will to die when he took an empty goblet and, dipping it into the clear water, drank it off two or three times filled; though, as we had put into his port for the purpose of getting water for our ships, it did not appear why we should consider it unfit for drink. Had I been enjoying Will’s place beside Donna Rusidda, and able to converse with her elegantly, as he was, I think I should have been content for our barca to have swayed gently on the bubbling waters of the spring—to give you some idea of the size of the spring there were four of these barcas floating on it at one time—for the rest of that summer day. But I could see that Will was fidgeting to be off, and presently he asked the Admiral if he and I might leap ashore off the high beak of our barca, which was overhanging some part of the bank. He made the excuse of some strange flower or the like. The boatman, seeing our intent, uttered some swift warning in Sicilian, which the Governor very politely translated to Will to tell the Admiral; but Master Will only used general terms of its not being safe, and the Admiral said, “My Lord, a jump like that would not frighten my officers.”

But, jumping together, we got more than we bargained for: we shot through the bank like a couple of bullets. We were almost up to our middles in thick black slime, of which you could not have dreamed the possibility so near that transparent water. Luckily for us, or I verily believe we might have been swallowed up, the good-natured boatman had unshipped the oars and held them out to us, and we were able to pull ourselves up on to the barca, where we sat on the end to dry our blackened legs in the sun, and presently the barcas swung round and dropped down stream.

The sun was now so powerful that long before we were back at the mouth of the river we were dry enough to have accepted the invitation of the courteous Sicilians and gone back among them to sit without fear of soiling them, more especially since we had removed our shoes and stockings—there was much naked-foot work on board ship in those days—but Will said that he could not sit beside ladies in such a plight, and I had never any say but Will’s say, though I did not know what was in his mind.

The town of Syracuse looks as I could imagine the cities of the Bible would have looked, when one sees it from the mouth of the Anapo at the opposite side of the great port on a July noon. Not a film of smoke rises from the low flat roofs of the mellow white-and-yellow houses, which, in their turn, seem to be crouching down within the shadow of the city walls. There is even a temple, for the cathedral is but the Temple of Minerva, with the columns still protruding from the northern face.

I should have said that only Will and I went to the mouth of the river, walking from where the water became too shallow for the barcas; the rest of the Admiral’s party rumbled off in the coaches to see the ruins of Epipolæ and Achradina, and the Greek castle of Euryalus and the street of tombs, the theatre, amphitheatre, and much more that I cannot remember of ancient Syracuse, though the Admiral had had Mr. Comyn to tell the younger officers about them most carefully. Will and I had been dismissed, as not being in fit condition to ride in gilt coaches with crimson velvet hangings, and had orders to have the barge at the landing-stairs under the Marina at such a time. I know that I was glad to be excused from parading in state round miles of old stones. The Admiral would not willingly miss a stone that had any ancient history hanging about it; and with a guide telling the story first in Sicilian, and the Governor, who was slow at taking the drift, putting it into Italian for Mr. Comyn, and Mr. Comyn, who was slow with his Italian, putting it into English for the Admiral, and the Admiral, not being satisfied, putting his questions and persisting with them till he understood his point, it would be a long day. The roads, too, were such that the coaches went slower than a walk. Will had more in his mind, but this I did not know then.

You may be sure that the Admiral had not embarked on this inland voyage of discovery before he had made certain that the wind would be lacking to carry the fleet, which had now everything on board, out. Seeing that the day was one of those days without enough air to blow a candle out, he said to Will:

“I am afraid that we have offended his Chameleonship after all.” And somehow I believe that Will’s translation of this to the Governor was a very lame affair.