With a light touch on the Princess's arm I bade her follow me, and
we raced together down the slope. At the foot of it we plunged into
a grove of olives and through it, as through a screen, into the
street of a little _marina_--two dozen fisher-huts, huddled close
above the foreshore, and tenantless; for their inhabitants were
gathered all on the beach and staring at the blaze.
I have said that the folk at Cape Corso are a race apart: and surely
there never was a stranger crowd than that in which, two minutes
later, we found ourselves mingling unchallenged. They accepted us,
may be, as a minor miracle of the night. They gazed at us curiously
there in the light of the conflagration, and from us away to the
burning island, and talked together in whispers, in a patois of which
I caught but one word in three. They asked us no questions.
Their voices filled the beach with a kind of subdued murmuring, all
alike gentle and patiently explanatory.
"It is the island of Giraglia," said one to me. "Yes, yes; this will
be the work of the patriots--a brave feat too, there's no denying.
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