Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/230

 "Is he dumb?" cried the Professor, who was rather proud of his polyglot knowledge of languages, and making the same demand in French. The boy only stared in his face.

"I must perforce try him in Italian," said my uncle, with a shrug. "Dove noi siamo?"

"Yes, tell me where we are?" I added, impatiently and eagerly.

Again the boy remained silent.

"My fine fellow, do you or do you not mean to speak?" cried my uncle, who began to get angry. He shook him and spoke another dialect of the Italian language. "Come si noma questa isola?"—what is the name of this island?

"Stromboli," replied the rickety little shepherd, dashing away from Hans and disappearing in the olive groves.

Stromboli! What effect on the imagination did these few words produce! We were in the center of the Mediterranean; amid the Eastern archipelago of mythological memory; in the ancient Strongylos, where Æolus kept the wind and the tempest chained up. And those blue mountains, which rose towards the rising of the sun, were the mountains of Calabria. And that mighty volcano which rose on the southern horizon was Etna, the fierce and celebrated Etna!

"Stromboli! Stromboli!" I repeated to myself. My uncle played a regular accompaniment to my gestures and words. We were singing together like an ancient chorus. Ah—what a journey—what a marvelous and extraordinary journey! Here we had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had come out by another. And this other was situated more than twelve hundred leagues from Sneffels, from that drear country of Iceland cast away on the confines of the earth. The wondrous chances of this expedition had transported us to the most harmonious and beautiful of earthly lands.

After a delicious repast of fruits and fresh water, we again continued our journey in order to reach the port of Stromboli. To say how we had reached the island would scarcely have been prudent. The superstitious character of the Italians would have been at work, and we should have been called demons vomited from the infernal regions. It was therefore necessary to pass for humble and unfor-