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Updated: May 11, 2025
The whole landscape was transformed, and the shadowy cluster of men and women on the shore paused in their toil, and turned their pale faces towards the rippling splendor, the heavy fishing-nets drooping from their hands like dark webs woven by giant spiders. "'Tis the first time we have seen the Arch of Death this year," said one in awed accents. "Ay, ay!" returned another, with a sigh.
"It is of no use for me to play the coward," said Hilary to himself at last. "If I am to get away it must be by a bold dash." He burst out into a hearty fit of silent laughter here. "My word, what a game it would be!" he said. "They say the place is haunted. Suppose I cover myself with fishing-nets and march straight out." "Wouldn't do!" he said, decidedly.
But other songs the sailor sings. The Mediterranean sailor is popularly supposed to chant snatches of opera over his fishing-nets; but, after all, his is only a larger sort of lake, with water of a questionable saltness.
In front of the houses are the markets in the open air, fish, vegetables, carts of oranges; in the sun sit women spinning from distaffs or weaving fishing-nets; and rows of children who were never washed and never clothed but once, and whose garments have nearly wasted away; beggars, fishermen in red caps, sailors, priests, donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians, carriages, carts, two-wheeled break-down vehicles, the whole tangled in one wild roar and rush and babel, a shifting, varied panorama of color, rags, a pandemonium such as the world cannot show elsewhere, that is what one sees on the road to Resina.
Then the fisherman, with trembling hand, felt for James's arm, and said: "I will go too." An hour had scarcely passed before a fresh tumult arose. It came from the house of the maker of fishing-nets. He and a neighbour were hauling the former's wife along, the same woman who had been so indignant against the adulteress shortly before.
"The boats come from two villages, my lord, between which at present there is a feud arising out of some fishing-nets that were carried away. They sent a regular challenge to each other a few days since, as is the custom here, and their champions are going to fight it out. You see the number of men on one side are equal to those on the other, and the boats are about the same size."
The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below.
Our stores consisted of two barrels of gunpowder, one hundred and forty pounds of ball and small shot, four fowling-pieces, a few old trading guns, eight pistols, twenty-four Indian daggers, some packages of knives, chisels, nails, and fastenings for a boat; a few yards of cloth, some blankets, needles, looking-glasses, and beads, together with nine fishing-nets, having meshes of different sizes.
Everything was cleanly smeared with coloured clay. On the walls hung sabres, hunting-whips, nets for birds, fishing-nets, guns, elaborately carved powder-horns, gilded bits for horses, and tether-ropes with silver plates. The small window had round dull panes, through which it was impossible to see except by opening the one moveable one. Around the windows and doors red bands were painted.
They produced every variety of basket-work of great beauty; they also made ropes and string of all sorts; their fishing-line, made from the bark of a species of nettle, was far stronger than any English line of the same thickness. Their fishing-nets, though coarse, answered their purpose. They were often eighty fathoms in length.
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