"
"At least it will not be so hot as in the hotel, and after all it has
not been very fatiguing."
"No," said the Count, "I fail to see how your exertions can have tired
you much."
Ruggiero looked down at his master and at the fine lady as she lay
listlessly extended in her cane chair, and he felt that in his heart he
hated them both as much as he loved Beatrice, which was saying much. But
he wondered how it was that less than half an hour earlier he had been
ready to upset the boat and drown every one in it indiscriminately.
Nevertheless he believed that if there had been a stiff breeze just
then, enough for his purpose, he would have stopped the boat's way, and
then put the helm hard up again, without slacking out a single sheet,
and he knew the little craft well enough to be sure of what would have
happened. Murderous intentions enough, as he thought of it all now, in
the calm water under the great cliff from which tradition says that
Tiberius shot delinquents into space from a catapult.
The men pulled hard by the lonely rocks, for the sun had almost set and
they knew how sharp the stones are at Tragara, when one must tread them
barefoot and burdened with hampers and kettles and all the paraphernalia
of a picnic.
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