CHAPTER XX

LOVE IS ENOUGH

NEEDLESS to say, I allowed free scope to the rejoicings, contenting myself with seeing that the prisoners were secure and a guard placed over them. It was one of those occasions when a certain licence was permissible. We were but a score or so all told, and we had captured the treasure galleon of the proudest king in Christendom. There was justification and to spare when Morgano, the Capriote fisherman turned sculptor, was heard declaring that henceforth the streets of Naples would be paved with gold instead of lava.

Donna Claudia was radiant, went so far as to drain a bumper in honour of the uproarious applause with which the mention of my name was greeted. “I was not mistaken in you," she kept saying, and her eyes were hovering about me in a way which made my pulse beat at a gallop. What foolishness we talked, God only knows. We were happy, supremely happy, in our triumph. At last, however, Donna Claudia characteristically grew thoughtful. "The officer," she said. I nodded in a bantering spirit, for I had noted the enthusiasm which possessed her during his talk about the Indies, and presently she went in search of the cabin where we had left him prisoner.

"Oh davant di maridassi
Nome rosis e nome flors!

E po dopo maritadis
Nome spinis e dolors!"

It was a gaunt, shock-headed painter from Friuli in the North who sang it: a cry of sadness, disappoint

ment, which really has a touch of pathos in it. “Ah, before one marries it's only roses, only flowers! But, once married, it's only thorns and sorrow!" The burden, certainly, was hardly such as I should have chosen under the circumstances, but the men joined in it with a will, holding hands and dancing as they did So. Even I ere long, as song followed song and ballad ballad, began to catch the inspiration of these strange comrades of mine who carolled out their rejoicing in such melancholy strains of wistfulness and disillusion.

"Bis auf das Feld von Lutzen,
Da traf die Kugel recht,
Da lag in seinem Blute
Der treue und der gute,

Der tapfre Landesknecht."

I gave them the pathetic, stirring ballad which I had sung so often in our Schloss at Freiburg, and lost though were words and sentiment upon them, they seized on the melody and shouted it in chorus until the vessel rang with it.

"Der tapfre Landesknecht!" Donna Claudia had returned, and was repeating the words in the quaintest of Italian accents. I made room smiling.

"What of your youthful conquest? Has he become reconciled to his captivity? Or is he heart-whole ?"

But she put her finger to her lips, and blushed and frowned, and would not answer me. And then she stood up in the midst of us, and her rich full voice burst out into a song of tragedy and passion. The theme was the execution of the boy-king Conradin-Corradino, little Conrad, as the Neapolitans have always called him and his comrade Frederick of Baden: the two brave German lads with whom perished the last hope of happiness for Naples. As for Charles of Anjou, the slayer, he has left a name at which men spit. Four centuries already have execrated his memory, and it may well be that as many more will execrate it. His victims lie in the Church of the Carmine, in a leaden coffin, a bright unspeckled sheathless sword beside them. "Regis Corradini Corpus!" Long before Donna

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Claudia had finished, the men had doffed their caps and were grouped about her in a circle reverently. The measured wash of the waves against the vessel's sides was the only sound that broke upon the singing.

And so we sang and listened and quaffed the costly vintage of the Spaniard, until the faint brown haze crept from the hill-tops and the first touch of evening chilled the atmosphere. The sun was dropping fast behind Posilipo, and wide flashes of gold were spreading all over the cup-shaped Bay. Between the two horns of the gulf the dark peaks of Capri caught the light, and presently the shore where Sorrento lies began to quiver softly in the sunset. Vesuvius was black and grim and threatening: a column of vapoury smoke was mounting slowly from its summit, and stretched across the paling sky like a banner floating defiantly from some tall citadel. It was time to think of moving, to sail to the city with our plunder.

I got up with a sigh and shook myself.

"You have not yet answered my question about the officer," I yawned slily. Donna Claudia was watching the gold and purple lights upon the water.

She laughed. "He is only a boy," she said. gave me his parole and I released him."

"You did what?" I shouted.

"He

"He looked so unhappy sitting there in the cabin, that when he promised not to interfere with the prisoners I told him he might have the run of the lower decks. I talked to him like a mother. You can have no idea how miserable he seemed and woebegone. His gratitude was delightful. Have I done wrong? I have not done wrong, have I?"

not that the expres"He is only a boy,"

I had said nothing, but I doubt sion of my face was all-sufficient. she cried again, and tapped her foot upon the deck impatiently. I strode off to the centre of the vessel, and she followed me.

"What did I tell you?" she exclaimed, but as I fancy more in relief than triumph. "See there. And you thought I wonder what you did think?"

My thoughts, however, were no longer what they had been, for there at the foot of the ladder, seated with his back to a half-closed door behind him, was the officer himself, whose unexpected liberation had supplied the cause for my uneasiness. He was engaged in smoking a short pipe—a habit to which I have never been able to accustom myself-and seemed to be lost in meditation. I noticed that his face looked ten years older, and that his hand trembled visibly when he beheld us. But he greeted us courteously enough, albeit clearly with an effort.

"You do not object?" he said, watching the smoke sail upwards. "I learnt it among the Indians, and it has become second nature to me."

Donna Claudia bent over the railing merrily with another laugh in my direction as I continued to peer down suspiciously.

"Smoke on," she answered, "if it gives you pleasure. I dare warrant it is not the only strange custom you have brought with you from the Indies."

I laughed in my turn. In those Southern countries laughter is too apt to prove infectious, and the dejection of the lad was such as quickly dispelled my apprehensions.

"I have heard tell," said I, "of lands where the barbarous heathens cause dead bodies first to be boiled, and then to be pounded in a mortar until at last these come to a kind of pulp, which they mingle with their wine and drink it."

"And I," cried Donna Claudia, "of lands where it is deemed an office of piety in children to kill their fathers at a certain age."

"And I," said the boy quietly, "of rebels whose over-confidence has involved their own destruction."

The change in his tone was so sudden and so marked that I stared at him bewildered. His face was grey and drawn and the veins were swollen, but his eyes shot defiance at us. Then he flung wide the door behind him, and I leapt to the ladder with a shout. Halfway down on the fifth rung I stopped as a man petrified.

"You will do well not to descend further," he cried out. "It so happens that these casks are filled with powder."

They lay in a long row open, a score of devilish, death-dealing ammunition barrels. He held his pipe in his hand suspended near them.

I reached the top again and stood there panting. Some men would have essayed a rush, trusted to chance and a quick grapple. I was from the North, and vain enough to fancy myself wiser. He was but a lad, and a lad is wont to love his life, however bravely he may vaunt the contrary. Whence I temporised.

"So the tables are turned,” I exclaimed, in as reckless a tone as I could manage. Donna Claudia was gazing downwards in a dreamy fashion. She seemed stupefied.

"Stay where you are," said the young officer. "A step or a cry and—” He was once more pointing with his pipe towards the powder. Then he blew a nervous puff into the air. “I give you five minutes in which to decide. Your barge is in readiness. It rests with you and your crew of masqueraders whether or not you quit this vessel."

Again I thought of a sudden spring upon him, and again perforce dismissed the notion. The situation was not less tragic than ridiculous. I had no desire to be blown into a thousand pieces, and the look on the boy's face was such as I never hope to see again on human visage.

"You permit me to communicate your terms to my companions?" I asked, with a desperate afterthought that we might still contrive to overpower him.

"To one of them," he answered grimly. "I know your trickeries. You will remain here and conduct your conversation openly. Your friend can then act as your spokesman to the others. No, sir, you need not go to seek him. You may call: I doubt not that the man you call will hear you. By Saint James of Compostella, I swear that if you stir a single step-at the first sign of treachery-I blow myself and your cursed crew out of the water."