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Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks. "Well, what next this ain't all, is it?" Gillow presently queried, from the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow.
It was all too beautiful and wonderful to take in at once, and then he only wanted wings the sooner to arrive, not eyes to see the passing objects. Afterwards the strange soft cry of the gondoliers and the sights appealed to him; but on this first evening every throb of his being was centred upon the one moment when he should hold his beloved one to his heart.
Ferris felt outraged by the trumped-up charge against them. "Listen, you others the prisoners," said the commissary. "Your padrone is anxious to return to Venice, and I wish to inflict no further displeasures upon him. Restore their rope to these honest men, and go about your business." The injured gondoliers spoke in low tones together; then one of them shrugged his shoulders and went out.
Brown, bare-legged boys flocked from San Pantaleone and the people's quarters on the smaller canals, remitting, for the nonce, their absorbing pastimes of crabbing and petty gambling, and ragged and radiant, stretched themselves luxuriously along the edge of the little quay, faces downward, emphasizing their humorous running commentaries with excited movements of the bare, upturned feet; while the gondoliers landed their passengers to a lively refrain of "Stali!" their curses and appeals to the Madonna blending not discordantly with the general babel of sound which gives such a sense of companionship in Venice human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from shore to shore, resonant in the brilliant atmosphere, quarrels softened to melodies across the water, cries of the gondoliers telling of ceaseless motion, the constant lap and plash of the wavelets and the drip of the oars making a soothing undertone of content.
The gondolier who had conducted them, an old, gray-headed, hard-looking fellow, had pocketed his fee, nodded his thanks, and pushed off again from the landing. "There goes old Beppo," said one of the gondoliers on shore. "He will make a good day's work of it. I can swear I saw the glitter of gold in his hand just now." "Yes, yes!" said another. "Let him alone for making his money.
Then he told his gondoliers to row him back to his house, near S. Giorgio Maggiore, and on the way he met the ambassador of Naples, in a fine new robe, with a smiling face, as he well might have, "for this," adds Commines, "was great news for him."
They flung themselves upon the rope, and lugged it off to their boat; and the gondoliers went out, too. The commissary turned to Ferris with an amiable smile. "I am sorry that those rogues should escape," said the American. "Oh," said the Italian, "they are poor fellows it is a little matter; I am glad to have served you."
I got in the way of calling him that when he was a little shaver and used to row me about with his father." The Canal was twinkling with gondola lights, and as they approached the broad arch of the Rialto the crowd became greater, obliging them to pause now and then, while the dip of multitudinous oars made itself heard, a delicious undertone to the shouts and execrations of excited gondoliers.
There was enough furniture, solid and well kept, in all the rooms. Among the pictures were full-length portraits in oils of two celebrated gondoliers one in antique costume, the other painted a few years since. The original of the latter soon came and stood before it.
One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own account, is sufficiently graphic: "In the autumn one day, going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing.
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