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ominous drops came pattering down. Our boatmen covered
themselves with brown capuchin-hoods and wrappers,
looking like so many friars taking us heretic sinners to
another world. We were now rapidly nearing the breakers
o f cape Misenum, the storm increasing every moment
in fea rfu l violence. In another quarter o f an hour we
should, with the aid o f heaven, round the cape and come
into the sheltered bay of Baja when lo
—
a tremendous
wave struck our fra il boat and shivered the rudder!
—
The boat was unmanageable, the sailflew round, flapping
with the report o f pistol-shots in the wind and every wave
cast us nearer the rocks that rose up in rough, jagged
precipitous masses
—
the leaves dashing against the
grim walls in impotent fu ry
—
roaring and foaming
like a caldron o f boiling water
—
high up overhead in
the dark clouds reared the old waichtower, like a spectre,
its towering form
—
it was a wild, superb scene but
which I wish never again to behold. We were but some
twenty feet from the cliffs, which threatened us with in
stant annihilation i f cast upon them.
Rami, rami,
we
all shouted when the rudder went
—
and all grasped the
oars but soon finding it created confusion we had to
leave them to the boatmen who, placing them out at the
stern as a substitute fo r the rudder, managed to keep off.
It was a moment of intense suspense
—
life and death
depended on holding out from the rocks■ long enough for
the wind to carry us round the point o f the cliffs that
rose perpendicular as a brickwall. Giovanni lay clenching
his fist in the agony o f fea r with a countenance so dole
fu l and miserable that a ghost would have laughed him-
self back to his tomb at the sight.
A t this moment o f imminent peril, I fe lt fo r the
first time what an awful thing it is toface death
,
suddenly,
unprepared and, as here, impotent even to make a struggle