Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/138

 "Have you ever seen the Bay of Naples late in the summer, before the snow-breathing winds come down from the Apennines to clarify the air? I know; doubtless you have sailed over it in autumn and winter and spring, but there is something for you still to see. The whole lovely panorama is like a mirage. If there is any poetry in your nature, this unforgetable picture is going to bring it out to you forthwith, for better or for worse.

Remember the pink stucco of the terraced city, the superlative blue of the water, the dazzling sunshine, the grim, gray ash-heap men call Vesuvius, the pink villages dotting the circular shore to the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula, the amethyst isles?—nothing seems real until you become part of it. The city is an enchanting illusion until your foot touches it, the sea until you dip your fingers into it.

William could not write poetry, not even the popular-song sort, but he often thought in Homeric verse. All in the forty-odd minutes it takes to enter the bay and glide into the haven inside the breakwater he was in rotation a Roman centurion, a gladiator in Pompeii, a Saracen gathering loot, a galley-salve (breaking his chains and killing the brutal overseer), a Christian martyr vanquishing the lions, and a soldier of Garibaldi—all fighters, every blessed one of them.

Mr. Cook, mindful of his commissions, spread the little army among the lesser first-class hotels such as were open at this time of the year. As usual in such arrangements there was a good deal