--
_The Song of Songs_.
Ahead of us, high on our right, rose the mountain ridges, scarp upon
scarp, to the snowy peak of Monte Stella; low on our left lay Nonza,
and beyond it a sea blue as a sapphire, scarcely rippled, void save
for one white sail far away on the south-west horizon--not the
_Gauntlet_; for, distant though she was, I could make out the shape
of her canvas, and it was square cut.
Nonza itself lay in the shadow of the shore with the early light
shimmering upon its citadel and upper works--a fortress to all
appearance asleep: but the Genoese pickets would be awake and
guarding the northward road for at least a league beyond, and to
avoid them we must cross the high mountain spurs, using where we
could their patches of forest and our best speed where these left the
ridges bare.
The way was hard--harder by far than I had deemed possible--and kept
us too busy for talk. Our silence was not otherwise constrained at
all. Passion fell away from us as we climbed; fell away with its
strife, its confusion, its distempered memories of the night now
past; and was left with the vapours of the coast where the malaria
brooded.
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