Within two miles of shore, and not long before dark, the wind (as
Captain Pomery had promised) broke off and headed us, blowing cool
and fresh off the land. I was hauling in the foresheet and belaying
when a sudden waft of fragrance fetched me upright, with head thrown
back and nostrils inhaling the breeze.
"Ay," said my father, at my elbow, "there is no scent on earth to
compare with it. You smell the _macchia_, lad. Drink well your
first draught of it, delicious as first love."
"But somewhere--at some time--I have smelt it before," said I.
"The same scent, only fainter. Why does it remind me of home?"
My father considered. "I will tell you," he said. "In the corridor
at home, outside my bedroom door, stands a wardrobe, and in it hang
the clothes I wore, near upon twenty years ago, in Corsica.
They keep the fragrance of the _macchia_ yet; and if, as a child, you
ever opened that wardrobe, you recall it at this moment."
"Yes," said I, "that was the scent."
My father leaned and gazed at the island with dim eyes.
Still no sign of house or habitation greeted us as we worked by short
tacks towards a deep bay which my father, after a prolonged
consultation of the chart, decided to be that of Sagona.
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