“We will be all night getting across,” growled suddenly the man on his left. “… I don’t know what Barbone was thinking of to get this antiquity out of his bed.”
“I told him there was hardly any breath in my old body,” declared the boatman’s tranquil voice.
Apparently in order to speak he had to cease rowing, for he rested on his oars while he went on in the grave-like silence. “But he raged like a devil; and rather than let him wake up all the neighbours I came out. I may just as well die in the boat as in bed.”
Both sbirri exclaimed indignantly against Barbone, but neither offered to take the sculls. With a painful groan the old man began to pull again. Cosmo asked: “What’s that dark thing between the heads of the jetties?” One of his captors, turning his head to look, said, “That must be the galley. I wish she would come this way. We would ask her for a tow.” The other man remarked sarcastically, “No fear, they are all snoozing in her except one perhaps to keep a lookout. It’s an easy life. … Voga, vecchio, voga.”
Cosmo thought suddenly that if by any chance the man-of-war boat happened to be pulling that way he would hail her without hesitation, and, surely, the officer in charge would not leave him in the hands of those villains without at least listening to his tale. Unluckily their way across the harbour did not take them near the man-of-war. The light at her mizzen peak seemed to Cosmo very far away; so that if it had not burned against the dark background of the land it would have seemed more distant than any star, and not half as brightly vigilant. He took his eyes from it and let them rest idly on the water ahead. The sbirro on his right hand emitted an immense yawn. This provided the other to mutter curses on the tediousness of all this affair. Cosmo had been too perplexed to feel bored. Just then as if in antagonism to those offensive manifestations he felt very alert. Moreover, the moment when something would have to be done was approaching, a tension of all his senses accumulating in a sort of allover impatience. While in that state, staring into the night, he caught sight of the man-of-war’s boat.
But was it?—well, it was something dark on the water, and as there was no other boat about … It was small—well, far off and probably end on. … He had heard no sound of rowing … lying on her oars … He could see nothing now … well, here goes, on the chance.
Without stirring a limb he took a long breath and let out the shout of “Boat ahoy” with all the force of his lungs. The volume of tone astonished himself. It seemed to fill the whole of the harbour so effectually that he felt he needn’t shout again and he remained as still as a statue. The effect on his neighbours was that both gave a violent start, which set the boat rolling slightly, and in their bewilderment they bent forward to peer into his face with immense eyes. After a time one of them asked in an awestruck murmur, “What’s the matter, signore?” and seized his cloak. The other, Cosmo heard distinctly whisper to himself, “That was a war cry,” while he also grabbed the cloak. The clasp being undone, it slipped off Cosmo’s shoulders and then they clung to his arms. It struck Cosmo as remarkable that the old boatman, had not ceased his feeble rowing for a moment.
The shout had done Cosmo good. It reestablished his self-respect somehow and it sent the blood moving through his veins as if indeed it had been a war cry. He had shaken their nerves. If they had not remained perfectly motionless holding his arms there would have started a scrimmage in that boat which would certainly have ended in the water. But their grip was feeble. They did nothing, but, bending towards each other in front of Cosmo till their heads almost touched, watched his lips from which such an extraordinary shout had come. Cosmo stared stonily ahead as if unconscious of their existence, and again he had that strange illusion of a dark spot ahead of the boat. He thought, “That’s no illusion. What a fool I was. It must be a mooring buoy.” A couple of minutes elapsed before he thought again, “That old fellow will be right into it, presently.”
He didn’t consider it his business to utter a warning because the bump he expected happened almost immediately. He had misjudged the distance. Owing to the slow pace the impact was very slight, slighter even than Cosmo expected against such a heavy body as a mooring buoy would be. It was really more like a feeble hollow sound than a shock. Cosmo, who was prepared for it, was really the one that felt it at once, and the ancient boatman looked sharply over his shoulder. He uttered no sound and did not even attempt to rise from the thwart. He simply, as it seemed to Cosmo, let go the oars. The sbirri only became aware of something having happened after the hollow bump was repeated, and Cosmo had become aware that the object on the water was not a buoy but another boat not much bigger than theirs. Then they both exclaimed and in their surprise their grip relaxed. One of them cried in astonishment,
