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Updated: May 14, 2025
Dawn was growing over the water, and the gray and oily surface of the lagoon was closely dotted with gondolas, distinct and black in the morning twilight; they came sweeping on from San Nicolò and Castello black and red, breast to breast gathering impetus as they neared the Piazzetta, in numbers which must have left every traghetto of Venice deserted; Nicolotti and Castellani allies, since they never had been friends!
It was a Venice with its street of waters and its central basin, where jostled the gondolas of the Aztec nobles and the light canoes of birch bark among the vessels of commerce which came laden with slaves and other merchandise from the surrounding villages a basin that disappeared the same day that the Indian empire fell.
A marble hall and a marble staircase, lofty chambers with silk or tapestried hangings, gilded cornices, and painted ceilings, gave a glimpse of almost Venetian splendor, and rare in our metropolitan houses of this age; but the first dwellers in St. James's Square had tender and inspiring recollections of the Adrian bride, had frolicked in St. Mark's, and glided in adventurous gondolas.
Hair that masses well, a head set on with an air, a neckerchief tied cleverly by an easy, practised hand, close-fitting gloves, feet well shaped and well covered, these advantages can make us forgive the odious sable broadcloth suit, which appears to have been adopted by society on the same principle that condemned all the Venetian gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness. Mr.
May watched the water-logged craft as it vanished under a distant bridge. "I like that idea about the gondolas," she remarked, a few minutes later, as Pauline and Uncle Dan, who had been taking a turn in the Giudecca, came to pick them up. "The poor old things must be glad to breathe their dying breath into those exquisite flasks and vases." "What's that about dying breaths?"
The speed of the Zeppelin was reduced by the failure of the motor, and one of the new French incendiary shells struck the gas bag near its center, causing a violent explosion. The two ends of the big gas bag dropped and as the gondolas hit the ground the entire load of bombs exploded, tearing the ship and its crew to shreds.
"Had these boats been with us," says our lieutenant, " ... they would have taken a part of the Rebels entrenchment in flank, and in their retreat wou'd have cut off numbers." But Howe was only a soldier, such an aid apparently never occurred to him, and the floating batteries gondolas, as they were called remained on the southern side of the peninsula. He ordered the attack.
As May stood upon the balcony, gazing far out over the lagoon, her young eyes undazzled by the intense mid-day light, she thought how sweet it would be to see again that look of grateful pleasure upon the worn face. Ah, she would sing! How she would sing! She would sing the heart into those people in the gondolas; she would sing the money out of their purses!
The gondola was a flat-bottomed boat, and inferior in nautical qualities speed, handiness, and seaworthiness to the galleys, which probably were keeled. The latter certainly carried sails, and may have been capable of beating to windward. Arnold preferred them, and stopped the building of gondolas. "The galleys," he wrote, "are quick moving, which will give us a great advantage in the open lake."
All round her, stretching almost across the canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas dark, leaning figures impelling them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face visible; and in their midst the barca, temple of light and music, built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns, a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the bosom of the night.
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