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I hurried forward, step for step with my guide, lest the door should be shut in my face before I could reach it. Over my hostess' shoulder, I saw a bare but neat interior; a "coffin" bed, a white-washed wall, and an uncarpeted floor, Mademoiselle Innocentina Palumbo sitting upon it, tailor-fashion, engaged in excavating a large, dark object from a rücksack.
She taunted me with being a Protestant, as if it were a black crime which bred others. Her name, if you would believe it, is Innocentina Palumbo Innocentina! But her tongue! Monsieur, I listened as if I had been turned to stone. And it was at this time that the young gentleman, of whom she had told me, came out of the inn.
I was tired out, and we fled south for rest to Rome, Naples, Amalfi, and Ravello. The Cappucini Hotel at Amalfi, Madame Palumbo's inn at Ravello, remain with me as places of pure delight, shone on even in winter by a more than earthly sun. Madame Palumbo was, as her many guests remember, an Englishwoman, and showed a special zeal in making English folk comfortable.
The well-known hotel kept by Madame Palumbo, who is thoroughly conversant with English ways and requirements, occupies a delightful position in the old aristocratic quarter of Ravello known as “Il Toro,” the name of which is still retained in the interesting little church of San Giovanni del Toro close by.
The performer is delighted with a few soldi, and the jaded scarecrow of a horse seems pleased with his momentary halt. Iterum altiora petimus; by degrees we reach the airy platform upon which Ravello stands, and finally alight at the comfortable old inn so long associated with the excellent family of Palumbo.
If the garden of the Hotel Palumbo seems a fitting place wherein to idle or to dream, might not it also appeal to some historian, not tied to time nor to the hard necessity of money-making, as a suitable spot for the conception of a history of the origin, rise, decline and fall of the great maritime Republic, whose dominions, still smiling and populous, surround Ravello on all sides?
By this time the ship left Callao for Honolulu, Manila, Hong Kong, and, as the Challenger had not crossed the Pacific Ocean in these directions, we made several soundings and deep-sea thermometrical measurements from Callao to Honolulu. With the thermometer wire has always been sent down a tow-net which opens and closes automatically, also invented by Captain Palumbo.
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