Walking ahead of the procession, which gets slowly down the rugged path, I lose sight of my companions, and have the solitude, the sun on the rocks, the glistening sea, all to myself.Soon I espy a man below me sauntering down among the rocks.He sees me and moves away, a solitary figure.I say solitary; and so it is in effect, although he is leading a little boy, and calling to his dog, which runs back to bark at me.Is this the brigand of whom I have read, and is he luring me to his haunt? Probably.I follow.He throws his cloak about his shoulders, exactly as brigands do in the opera, and loiters on.At last there is the point in sight, a gray wall with blind arches.The man disappears through a narrow archway, and I follow.
Within is an enormous square tower.I think it was built in Spanish days, as an outlook for Barbary pirates.A bell hung in it, which was set clanging when the white sails of the robbers appeared to the southward; and the alarm was repeated up the coast, the towers were manned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away to the hills, I doubt not, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so much to be dreaded as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover.The bell is gone now, and no Moslem rovers are in sight.The maidens we had just passed would be safe if there were.My brigand disappears round the tower;and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,--a red stucco, Egyptian-looking building,--on the very edge of the rocks.
The man unlocks a door and goes in.I consider this an invitation, and enter.On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the other a kitchen,--not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a pretty circular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of the point.My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being.It is very solitary, he says.I should think so.It is the end of everything.The Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the worn crags below.The rocks rise up to the sky behind.There is nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrified Capri, three miles distant across the strait.It is an excellent place for a misanthrope to spend a week, and get cured.There must be a very dispiriting influence prevailing here; the keeper refused to take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen so affected.
We returned late.The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one, was superintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed the last point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left us stumbling over the rough path among the hills, darkened by the high walls.We were not sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massa road.For there lay the sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with its darkening groves and hundreds of twinkling lights.As we went down the last descent, the bells of the town were all ringing, for it was the eve of the fete of St.Antonino.
CAPRI
"CAP, signor? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a mariner, touching his Phrygian cap.The people here abbreviate all names.With them Massa is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is reduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrento into Serent.
Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic, and own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climb the steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri.I have read in some book that it used to be always visible from Sorrento.
But now the promontory has risen, the Capo di Sorrento has thrust out its rocky spur with its ancient Roman masonry, and the island itself has moved so far round to the south that Sorrento, which fronts north, has lost sight of it.
We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be spared from the landscape.It lies only three miles from the curving end of the promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples.In this atmosphere distances dwindle.The nearest land, to the northwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as Naples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay to guard the entrance.It is really a rock, three miles and a half long, rising straight out of the water, eight hundred feet high at one end, and eighteen hundred feet at the other, with a depression between.If it had been chiseled by hand and set there, it could not be more sharply defined.So precipitous are its sides of rock, that there are only two fit boat-landings, the marina on the north side, and a smaller place opposite.One of those light-haired and freckled Englishmen, whose pluck exceeds their discretion, rowed round the island alone in rough water, last summer, against the advice of the boatman, and unable to make a landing, and weary with the strife of the waves, was in considerable peril.
Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour is still most graceful and poetic.This wonderful atmosphere softens even its ruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty.Sometimes the haze plays fantastic tricks with it,--a cloud-cap hangs on Monte Solaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rock seem to float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that the rising wind will carry away perhaps.I know now what Homer means by "wandering islands." Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and so destroy forever another island of the imagination? The bane of travel is the destruction of illusions.