venture and were caught, what would be probably done to us? The answers

were discouraging: There was a strong guard or police force; the Piraeus

was a small town, and any stranger seen in it would surely attract

attention--capture would be certain. The commandant said the punishment

would be "heavy;" when asked "how heavy?" he said it would be "very

severe"--that was all we could get out of him.

At eleven o'clock at night, when most of the ship's company were abed,

four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring

the enterprise, and started two and two, and far apart, over a low hill,

intending to go clear around the Piraeus, out of the range of its police.

Picking our way so stealthily over that rocky, nettle-grown eminence,

made me feel a good deal as if I were on my way somewhere to steal

something. My immediate comrade and I talked in an undertone about

quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found nothing cheering in the

subject. I was posted. Only a few days before, I was talking with our

captain, and he mentioned the case of a man who swam ashore from a

quarantined ship somewhere, and got imprisoned six months for it; and

when he was in Genoa a few years ago, a captain of a quarantined ship

went in his boat to a departing ship, which was already outside of the

harbor, and put a letter on board to be taken to his family, and the

authorities imprisoned him three months for it, and then conducted him

and his ship fairly to sea, and warned him never to show himself in that

port again while he lived. This kind of conversation did no good,

further than to give a sort of dismal interest to our quarantine-breaking

expedition, and so we dropped it. We made the entire circuit of the town

389

The Innocents Abroad