ri to Salerno, we talked of
escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for
the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and
struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary 'thou shalt'
and 'thou shalt not' of the world. We were uplifted, as though our quest
was a holy thing, as though love for one another was a mission....

"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock
Capri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and
hiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing of
the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in
puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the grey; but,
indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There, you know, was the
rock, still beautiful, for all its scars, with its countless windows and
arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving
of grey, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and
masses of agave and prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And out
under the archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats were
coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the mainland,
another little string of boats came into view, driving before the wind
towards the southwest. In a little while a multitude had come out, the
remoter just little specks of ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward
cliff.

"'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all this madness, of
war.'

"And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across the
southern sky we did not heed it. There it was--a line of little dots in
the sky--and then more, dotting the southeastern horizon, and then still
more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks.
Now they were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and now
a multitude would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of
light. They came rising and falling and growing larger, like some huge
flight of gulls or rooks, or such-like birds moving with a marvellous
uniformity, and ever as they drew nearer they spread over a greater
width of sky. The southward wing flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud
athwart the sun. And then suddenly they swept round to the eastward and
streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer
again until they vanished from the sky. And after that we noted to the
northward and very high Evesh