It was a lovely night. The moonlight was dancing on the waves, the ship glided smoothly on before a gentle breeze. Miss Lydia was not sleepy, and nothing but the presence of an unpoetical person had prevented her from enjoying those emotions which every human being possessing a touch of poetry must experience at sea by moonlight. When she felt sure the young lieutenant must be sound asleep, like the prosaic creature he was, she got up, took her cloak, woke her maid, and went on deck. Nobody was to be seen except the sailor at the helm, who was singing a sort of dirge in the Corsican dialect, to some wild and monotonous tune. In the silence of the night this strange music had its charm. Unluckily Miss Lydia did not understand perfectly what the sailor was singing. Amid a good deal that was commonplace, a passionate line would occasionally excite her liveliest curiosity. But just at the most important moment some words of /patois/ would occur, the sense of which utterly escaped her. Yet she did make out that the subject was connected with a murder. Curses against the assassin, threats of vengeance, praise of the dead were all mingled confusedly.
She remembered some of the lines. I will endeavour to translate them here.
. . . "Neither cannon nor bayonets . . .
Brought pallor to his brow. . .
As serene on the battlefield . . . as a summer sky.
He was the falcon--the eagle's friend . . .
Honey of the sand to his friends . . .
To his enemies, a tempestuous sea. . . .
. . . Prouder than the sun . . . gentler than the moon . . . He for whom the enemies of France . . . never waited . . . Murderers in his own land . . . struck him from behind . . .
As Vittolo slew Sampiero Corso . . .
Never would they have dared to look him in The face . . . Set up on the wall Before my bed . . . my well-earned cross of honour . . . red is its ribbon . . . redder is my shirt! . . . For my son, my son in a far country . . . keep my cross and my blood-stained shirt! . . .
. . . He will see two holes in it . . . For each hole a hole in another shirt! . . . But will that accomplish the vengeance? . . . I must have the hand that fired, the eye that aimed . . . the heart that planned!" . . .
Suddenly the sailor stopped short.
"Why don't you go on, my good man?" inquired Miss Nevil.
The sailor, with a jerk of his head, pointed to a figure appearing through the main hatchway of the schooner: it was Orso, coming up to enjoy the moonlight. "Pray finish your song," said Miss Lydia. "It interests me greatly!"
The sailor leaned toward her, and said, in a very low tone, "I don't give the /rimbecco/ to anybody!"
"The what?"
The sailor, without replying, began to whistle.
"I have caught you admiring our Mediterranean, Miss Nevil," said Orso, coming toward her. "You must allow you never see a moon like this anywhere else!"
"I was not looking at it, I was altogether occupied in studying Corsican. That sailor, who has been singing a most tragic dirge, stopped short at the most interesting point."
The sailor bent down, as if to see the compass more clearly, and tugged sharply at Miss Nevil's fur cloak. It was quite evident his lament could not be sung before Lieutenant Orso.
"What were you singing, Paolo France?" said Orso. "Was it a /ballata/ or a /vocero/? Mademoiselle understands you, and would like to hear the end."
"I have forgotten it, Ors' Anton'," said the sailor.
And instantly he began a hymn to the Virgin, at the top of his voice.
Miss Lydia listened absent-mindedly to the hymn, and did not press the singer any further--though she was quite resolved, in her own mind, to find out the meaning of the riddle later. But her maid, who, being a Florentine, could not understand the Corsican dialect any better than her mistress, was as eager as Miss Lydia for information, and, turning to Orso, before the English lady could warn her by a nudge, she said:
"Captain what does /giving the rimbecco/ mean?"
"The rimbecco!" said Orso. "Why, it's the most deadly insult that can be offered to a Corsican. It means reproaching him with not having avenged his wrong. Who mentioned the rimbecco to you?"
"Yesterday, at Marseilles," replied Miss Lydia hurriedly, "the captain of the schooner used the word."
"And whom was he talking about?" inquired Orso eagerly.
"Oh, he was telling us some odd story about the time--yes, I think it was about Vannina d'Ornano."
"I suppose, mademoiselle, that Vannina's death has not inspired you with any great love for our national hero, the brave Sampiero?"
"But do you think his conduct was so very heroic?"
"The excuse for his crime lies in the savage customs of the period.
And then Sampiero was waging deadly war against the Genoese. What confidence could his fellow-countrymen have felt in him if he had not punished his wife, who tried to treat with Genoa?"
"Vannina," said the sailor, "had started off without her husband's leave. Sampiero did quite right to wring her neck!"
"But," said Miss Lydia, "it was to save her husband, it was out of love for him, that she was going to ask his pardon from the Genoese."
"To ask his pardon was to degrade him!" exclaimed Orso.
"And then to kill her himself!" said Miss Lydia. "What a monster he must have been!"
"You know she begged as a favour that she might die by his hand. What about Othello, mademoiselle, do you look on him, too, as a monster?"
"There is a difference; he was jealous. Sampiero was only vain!"
"And after all is not jealousy a kind of vanity? It is the vanity of love; will you not excuse it on account of its motive?"
Miss Lydia looked at him with an air of great dignity, and turning to the sailor, inquired when the schooner would reach port.
"The day after to-morrow," said he, "if the wind holds."
"I wish Ajaccio were in sight already, for I am sick of this ship."
She rose, took her maid's arm, and walked a few paces on the deck.
Orso stood motionless beside the helm, not knowing whether he had better walk beside her, or end a conversation which seemed displeasing to her.
"Blood of the Madonna, what a handsome girl!" said the sailor. "If every flea in my bed were like her, I shouldn't complain of their biting me!"
