L'Infresco
Point is ahead, not three miles away. It is of no use to row, for the
breeze will come up before long and save you the trouble. But the sea is
white and motionless. Far in the offing a Sicilian schooner and a couple
of clumsy "martinganes"--there is no proper English name for the
craft--are lying becalmed, with hanging sails. The men on board the
felucca watch them and the sea. There is a shadow on the white, hazy
horizon, then a streak, then a broad dark blue band. The schooner braces
her top-sail yard and gets her main sheet aft. The martinganes flatten
in their jibs along their high steeving bowsprits and jib-booms. Shift
your sheets, too, now, for the wind is coming. Past L'Infresco with its
lovely harbour of refuge, lonely as a bay in a desert island, its silent
shade and its ancient spring. The wind is south by west at first, but it
will go round in an hour or two, and before noon you will make
Scalea--stand out for the reef, the only one in Calabria--with a stern
breeze. You have passed the most beautiful spot on the beautiful Italian
coast, without seeing it. There, between the island of Dino and the cape
lies San Nicola, with its grand deserted tower, its mighty cliffs, its
deep, safe bay and its velvet sand.
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