I am studying him and,
despite his protean manifestations, have discovered three principal
ingredients: malaria, bronchitis and hay-fever - not your ordinary
hay-fever, oh, no! but such as a mammoth might conceivably catch, if
thrust back from his germless, frozen tundras into the damply blossoming
Miocene.
The landlady of this establishment has a more commonplace name for the
distemper. She calls it "scirocco." And certainly this pest of the south
blows incessantly; the mountain-line of Gargano is veiled, the sea's
horizon veiled, the coast-lands of Apulia veiled by its tepid and
unwholesome breath. To cheer me up, she says that on clear days one can
see Castel del Monte, the Hohenstaufen eyrie, shining yonder above
Barletta, forty miles distant. It sounds rather improbable; still,
yesterday evening there arose a sudden vision of a white town in that
direction, remote and dream-like, far across the water. Was it Barletta?
Or Margherita? It lingered awhile, poised on an errant sunbeam; then
sank into the deep.
From this window I look into the little harbour whose beach is dotted
with fishing-boats. Some twenty or thirty sailing-vessels are riding at
anchor; in the early morning they unfurl their canvas and sally forth,
in amicable couples, to scour the azure deep - it is greenish-yellow at
this moment - returning at nightfall with the spoils of ocean, mostly
young sharks, to judge by the display in the market.
