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Everything about this spring is far more striking and beautiful than the colour in the blue grotto of Capri. It is heaven in the water, a jewelled floor of marvels, "a sea of glass," "like unto sapphire," a type, perhaps, of that on which the blessed stand before the throne of God.
This was three years ago, and ever since he had taken up his quarters on the shores of the gulf, either in one of the hotels in Sorrento or hiring a small villa in Capri. He had a piano, a few books: picked up transient acquaintances of a day, week, or month in the stream of travellers from all Europe.
An active man might go from the Marinella, at the foot of the Scaricatojo, or the place where the crew of the felucca had landed, to the Marina Grande of Sorrento in an hour. At the latter beach boats were always to be found, and two hours more would carry the messenger, by water, to the ships off Capri, even in a calm.
The new portfolio, when it arrived, proved to be filled, not as the others, with landscapes and waterscapes, but with studies from life Capri fisher girls, groups of market people, Venetian boatmen, and hasty sketches for portraits.
They are mostly such queer people and so preoccupied about themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful isn't it? But I think Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri." "Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?" "We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically.
There is little of interest to be seen in the existing portions of Tiberius’ chief villa, for the building has been despoiled centuries ago of its rich marbles, its slabs of giallo and verde antico, its pillars of red porphyry and serpentino, some fragments of which may be found imbedded in the pavement of the mosque-like little Duomo of Capri.
"As you please," he said, and let them drop into the basket. Silence again. The sea was smooth as glass. Not a ripple was heard against the prow. Even the white sea-birds that roost among the caves of Capri pursued their prey with soundless flight. "You might take the oranges to your mother," again commenced Tonino. "We have oranges at home; and when they are gone, I can go and buy some more."
The exciting part began in Cairo; but perhaps I ought to go back to what happened on the Laconia, between Naples and Alexandria. Luckily no one can expect a man who actually rejoices in his nickname of "Duffer" to know how or where a true story should begin. The huge ship was passing swiftly out of the Bay of Naples, and already we were in the strait between Capri and the mainland.
We were fortunate this time in getting into the Blue Grotto the sea being quite smooth. The reflections upon the rocky roof were not as fine as we expected; but Miss N. pronounced the water "the prettiest blue that ever was," and she is an authority upon color. While at Capri we ascended to the villa of Tiberius, on the edge of a perpendicular cliff nearly two thousand feet high.
The entrance to the Blue Grotto, to visit which we had come to Capri, is by a semicircular opening, some three feet in width and two feet in height, and just large enough to admit a small boat. One lies flat in the bottom of this, waits for the impulse of a beneficent wave, and is carried through the mouth of the cavern, and rescued from it in like manner by some receding billow.
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