As we made fast to the Marina our tobacco was temporarily sealed after the usual mean Italian fashion. Next morning an absurd old person, in a broad red baldrick, came on board and counted noses, to ascertain that we had not brought the dreaded small-pox from the Ionian Islands. After being graciously and liberally allowed to land, we were visited by the local chapmen, whose goods appeared rather mixed–polished cowhorns and mildewed figs, dolls in costume and corrosive oranges; by the normal musical barber, who imitates at a humble distance bird and beast; and by the vendor of binoculars, who asks forty francs and who takes ten. The captain noted his protest at the Consulate, and claimed by way of sauvetage 200l. The owners offered 200 lire–punds Scots. Briefly, noon had struck before we passed out of the noise and the smells of Messina.
Our good deed had cost us dear. A wet scirocco had replaced the bright norther and saddened all the view. Passing the tide-rip Charybdis, a meeting of currents, which called only for another hand at the wheel; and the castled crag of naughty Scylla, whose town has grown prodigiously, we bade adieu to the ’tower of Pelorus.’ Then we shaped our course for the Islands of Æolus, or the Winds, and the Lipari archipelago, all volcanic cones whose outlines were misty as Ossian’s spectres. And we plodded through the dreary dull-grey scene of drizzling scirocco–
Till, when all veilèd sank in darkling air, Naught but the welkin and the wave was there