Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/109

 quick breath from aching lungs, and with many a pause from weakness, and many an involuntary shudder from cruel memories, he told her how he had first come thither from Gorgona.

'Saturnino and I escaped together, and one other man, who, poor wretch, was shot as he leapt from the wall. We had planned it long before we could find the occasion to take that mad plunge into the sea. We swam and swam, and at last fortune favoured us in a wondrous way, we came on a drifting boat, the boat, I suppose, of some wrecked tartana, she was Mediterranean build. In that we rowed; and sculled ourselves warily all night long, and gained the coast, and hid all day long under the rocks off Romito. There is a wild thicket of rosemary there; it served to hide us. At nightfall we took to the sea again. The idea of Saturnino was to get ashore somewhere near either the Albegna's or the Fiora's mouth, and so in time creep home to his old lair by Monte Labbro. We pulled all day long; we were half dead of hunger and thirst; we had drunk at a spring near Romito, and for food we had a bit of black Gorgona bread, but we had finished that at dawn. We