fierce and sullen, the women thought her dull and intractable, the priests thought her heathenish; but she was none of these things; she was only a young creature of splendid health and vigour, with sentiments in her that had no name, and found no home in the world that was around her: she was the child of Saturnino.
The boat went through the waters swiftly, as the wind blew more strongly; the sandy shore with its scrub of low-growing rock-rose[1] and prickly Christ's-thorn did not change its landscape, but what she looked at always was the sea; the sea that in the light had the smiling azure of a young child's eyes, and when the clouds cast shadows on it, had the intense impenetrable brilliancy of a jewel.
In the distance were puffs of white and grey, like smoke or mist; those mists were Corsica and Capraja.
Elba towered close at hand.
Gorgona lay far beyond, with all the other little isles that seem made to shelter Miranda and Ariel, but of Gorgona she knew nothing; she was steering straight towards it, but it was many a league distant on the northerly water.
