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the gray; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There,
you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its
countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a
thousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken by vine-clad
terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and
prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And out under the
archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats were
coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the
mainland, another little string of boats came into view, driving
before the wind towards the south-west. In a little while a
multitude had come out, the remoter just little specks of
ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff.
"
'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all this
madness of war.'
"And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying
across the southern sky we did not heed it. There it was--a line
of little dots in the sky--and then more, dotting the south-eastern
horizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky was
stippled with blue specks. Now they were all thin little strokes
of blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch the
sun and become short flashes of light. They came, rising and
falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks
or such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever
as they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The
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