Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/166

 the helm of a felucca and bring it safely in over the algæ-heaps and dangerous shallows of the choked harbour; she could fling a net with force and skill, though when it was full of shining, struggling little fish, she often liked to loose it and let them all slide back whence they came; and furthermore she could sing all the rispetti and stornelli of the Maremmano shore to the throbbing strings of an old lute, which Joconda's sons in their short lives had loved to make music with, when they came home from the coral fishing. The chords of that lute and the clear voice from her young throat were the only melody that ever enlivened the damp hot nights, when the scirocco was filling the sorry houses with sand and the haze on the sea hid the green Giglio isle.

Even her singing took its character from the melancholy and abandonment that characterised the land and the water, and it was rarely that she chose other themes than the passionate laments of the provincial canzoni, for those who go far out to sea at risk of life, or for the faithless mountaineer who leaves amara Maremma without a sigh or a backward look, or than, more tragic and more terrible still, that tale of Pia Tolomei,