Page:Bill the minder.djvu/180

 THE SICILIAN CHAR-WOMAN lad discovered, alas! that he was only playing with brass buttons.

'After the first shock of my new disappointment had passed away, I questioned the lad as to how he had disposed of the clove kernels, and he told me that his father, who considered them excellent bait, had taken them from him and given him three brass buttons in exchange.

'On asking him where his father was at the present moment, he pointed with his sunburnt hand to the horizon, and looking in the direction indicated, I perceived a little fishing-smack, miles away. Without the loss of a single second, I hired a boat, and, with a boatman to assist, rowed in pursuit, and after a chase of three or four hours drew up, in an exhausted condition, alongside the smack. I now in piteous tones begged the clove kernels of the weather-beaten mariner, but he only laughed loudly and bitterly in reply, and, on my inquiring the reason of his cruel mirth, told me in faltering accents that he had only just hauled in his lines to discover that the fish had gone off with the bait and hook as well. Thus doomed to disappointment, I spent the rest of the day in a state of mind bordering on madness.

'It was a little time after this that, one evening, I was sitting over the kitchen fire. The cook had just served up an excellent dish of fish, and my mind was still turning to Sicily in spite of my endeavours to forget that there was such a place, and wondering if 128