Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/154

 The little felucca did fly; these butterfly-like boats are the lightest and the swiftest in the world. A strong wind was blowing from the north-east and made the little sail swell out as if it were a soap-bubble being blown by the children of Glaucus in play.

'I shall be so late home!' she thought with a pang as the blue water raced past the sides of the boat, and the sandy shore, and the red tufa hills, and the white vapours rising from the morass, and the stately line of the receding mountains all drifted by her as they went. Her eyes filled as she saw the old stone house where she had dwelt with Joconda standing against the crumbling quay of Santa Tarsilla, whose stones were fewer every year as the rains soaked them, and the weeds dragged them down, and the stormy water sapped their base.

'Andrea is always alive?' she asked of the old man with her.

He chuckled, 'Ay, ay, always. We old blasted sea-pines are hard to kill; all the sap has been run out of us, but we hold fast on the sand. I am eighty years old, and Andreino he must be going on for a hundred, but we are alive, we can suck our