ed channel into the larger body of water--the wind
appeared to change. Really, I suppose, we came into the steady southwest
wind which had probably been drawing all day up toward the Adriatic. In
two hours more we made the lighthouse of Stilo, and I was then tired
enough to crawl down into the fearfully smelling little cuddy, and,
wrapping Battista's heavy storm-jacket round my feet, I caught some sort
of sleep.

But not for very long. I struck my watch at three in the morning. And
the air was so unworthy of that name,--it was such a thick paste,
seeming to me more like a mixture of tar and oil and fresh fish and
decayed fish and bilge-water than air itself,--that I voted three
morning, and crawled up into the clear starlight,--how wonderful it was,
and the fresh wet breeze that washed my face so cheerily!--and I bade
Battista take his turn below, while I would lie there and mind the helm.
If--if he had done what I proposed, I suppose I should not be writing
these lines; but his father, good fellow, said: "No, signor, not yet. We
leave the shore now for the broad bay, you see; and if the wind haul
southward, we may need to go on the other tack. We will all stay here,
till we see what the deep-sea wind may be." So we lay there, humming,
singing, and telling stories, still this rampant southwest wind behind,
as if all the powers of the Mediterranean meant to favor my mission to
Gallipoli. The boat was now running straight before it. We stretched out
bravely into the gulf; but, before the wind, it was astonishing how
easily the lugger ran. He said to me at last, however, that on that
course we were running to leeward of our object; but that it was the
best point for his boat, and if the wind held, he would keep on so an
hour longer, and trust to the land breeze in the morning to run down the
opposite shore of the bay.

"If" again. The wind did not keep on. Either the pole-star, and the
dipper, and all the rest of them, had rebelled and were drifting
westward,--and so it seemed; or this steady southwest gale was giving
out; or, as I said before, we had come into the sweep of a current even
stronger, pouring from the Levantine shores of the Mediterranean full up
the Gulf of Tarentum. Not ten minutes after the skipper spoke, it was
clear enough to both of us that the boat must go about, whether we
wanted to or not, and we waked the other boy, to send him forward,
before we accepted the necessity. Half asleep, he got up, cour