The Atlantic Monthly, page 129 by Various Authors
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it be true, as C---- says, that those dying flaps of theirs, are exquisite luxury to them, because for the first time they have their fill of oxygen? "Had he ever been beyond Peloro?" "O yes, signor; my wife, Caterina, was herself from Messina,"--and on great saints' days they had gone there often. Poor fellow, his great saint's day sealed his fate. I nodded to Frank,--Frank nodded to me,--and Frank blandly informed him that, by order of General Garibaldi, he would take the gentleman at once on board, pass the strait with him, "and then go where he tells you."
The Southern Italian has the reputation, derived from Tom Moore, of being a coward. When I used to speak at school,
"Ay, down to the dust with them,--slaves as they are!"--
stamping my foot at "dust," I certainly thought they were a very mean crew. But I dare say that Neapolitan school-boys have some similar school piece about the risings of Tom Moore's countrymen, which certainly have not been much more successful than the poor little Neapolitan revolution which he was pleased to satirize. Somehow or other, Victor Emanuel is, at this hour, king of Naples. Coward or not, this fine fellow of a fisherman did not flinch. It is my private opinion that he was not nearly as much afraid of the enterprise as I was. I made this observation at the moment with some satisfaction, sent Frank's man up to my lodgings with a note ordering my own traps sent down, and in an hour we were stretching out, under the twilight, across the little bay.
No! I spare you the voyage. Sybaris is what we are after, all this time, if we can only get there. Very easy it would be for me to give you cheap scholarship from the Æneid, about Palinurus and Scylla and Charybdis. Neither Scylla nor Charybdis bothered me,--as we passed wing-wing between them before a smart north wind. I had a little Hunter's Virgil with me, and read the whole voyage,--and confused Battista utterly by trying to make him remember something about Palinuro, of whom he had never heard. I