had thick stumpy masts, and long tapering yards, for lateen
sails, now stowed fore and aft in the boats. The sails were bent, the
oars being placed along the thwarts, and they wore an air which showed
they would be ready for sea at a moment's notice.

There was somewhat a wicked look about them, at the same time they might
belong to peaceable fishermen; for there were several nets hung up on
poles along the shore, and at times a few old men might be seen mending
them or cleaning the boats. The chief communication between the cove or
basin I have described and the interior of the island was by a narrow
pathway, which ran along near the bottom of the ravine for some
distance, and then, turning to the right with many a zig-zag, led along
the edge of deep precipices till it reached the summit of the cliffs.
At the very bottom of the ravine leaped and sparkled a bright, clear
rivulet, the only stream in the island. It might be seen far up,
indeed, at what might be called the head of the ravine, rushing forth
from between two cliffs, and bounding down a fall of two or three
hundred feet in a mass of glittering foam.

One of the wildest and most inaccessible spots in the island was in that
portion to the right, or east of the cove--the point of land, indeed,
formed by it and the sea, and bounded on the north by the ravine. The
only access to it from the rest of the island was from the north-east by
a narrow neck of land, with the sea-cliffs on one side and those of the
ravine on the other.

This wild and rugged spot had been selected centuries ago, when the then
powerful republic of Venice held sway over considerable territories in
those seas, for the erection of a stronghold; and certainly no place
could have been better adapted, by its position and nature, for defying
the attacks of an enemy from without, or for guarding any rich argosies
taking shelter in the bay below. It was of course for the purpose of
protecting their commerce that this rock had been seized on and
fortified. It had probably also at some other period been increased and
strengthened on the land side, and occupied for less laudable objects
than the mere protection of commerce. Whatever might have been the
original intention of its erection and its subsequent use, the massive
towers and turreted walls had long since been disused, and had fallen
into the decay of years, unheeded and unknown, except by a few families
of fishermen who had from genera