Chap. III
Embark for Corsica—Coast of France and Italy.—Toulon.—Hyères Islands, Frejus, &c.—A Stormy night.—Crossing the Tuscan Sea.
Once more we are at the water stairs. A stout boat is ready to convey us with our baggage to L’Industrie, one of Messrs. Vallery’s fine steam-boats, in turn for Bastia. Just as we are pushing off, a carriage drives to the quay, with a niece of General the Count di Rivarola, formerly in the British service. She is returning to Corsica. We do the civil, spread plaids, and place her in the stern sheets; and she is very agreeable.
It is Sunday morning. The bells of the old church of St. Victor are ringing at early mass. The ships in the port have hoisted their colours. There is our dear, time-honoured jack, “the flag that has braved,” &c., as we say on all occasions; and the stars and stripes, the crescent and star, and the towers of Castille; with crosses of all shapes and colours, in as great variety as the costumes we saw in the café. The tricolor floated on the forts of St. Jean and St. Nicholas, as well as on French craft of all descriptions.
All was gay, but not more joyous than our own buoyant spirits. Time had been spent pleasantly enough at Marseilles, but it was a delay; and there is nothing an Englishman hates more than delays in travelling. Thwarted in his humour, he becomes quite childish, and frets and chafes more at having to wait two or three days for a steamboat than at any other hindrance I know. Now, when L’Industrie, with her ensign at the peak, had, somehow or other, with a din of unutterable cries in maritime French, been extricated from the dense tiers of vessels along the quay, and hauling out of the harbour, we were at last fairly on the high road to Corsica, never did the sun appear to shine more brightly; the Mediterranean looked more blue than any blue one had seen before, there was a ripple from the fresh breeze, the waves sparkled, and seemed positively to laugh and partake of our joy.
We hardly cared to speculate on our fellow-passengers, as one is apt to do when there is nothing else to engross the thoughts; and yet there were some among them we should wish to sketch. Besides French officers joining their regiments in the island, there was one, a Corsican, who had served in Algeria, returning home on sick leave. It was to be feared that it had come too late, for the poor invalid was so feeble, worn, and emaciated that it seemed his native country could offer him nothing but a grave. There was a Corsican priest on board, a pleasant, well-informed man, who met our advances to an acquaintance with great readiness, and was delighted with our proposed visit to his island. Some Corsican gentlemen, a lady or two, and commercial men en route for Leghorn, completed the party. We seemed to be the only English. I was mistaken.
“After all, there is a countryman of ours on board,” I said, pointing to a pair of broad shoulders, disappearing under the companion-hatch. I caught sight of him just now; a fine, hale man, rather advanced in years, with a fair complexion, ruddy, and a profusion of grey hair. He wears a suit of drab; very plain, but well turned out.
“Unmistakeably English, as you say; it may be pleasant. I wonder we did not make him out before among these sallow-faced and rather dirty-looking gentry in green and sky-blue trousers.”
We were soon abreast of the group of rocky islets off the harbour, passing close under the Château d’If. The sea was smooth, the sky unclouded, but a gentle breeze deliciously tempered the heat, and vessels of every description—square-rigged ships, and coasting feluccas and xebecs—on their different courses, gave life to the scene. Thus pleasantly we ran along the French coast, here much indented and swelling into rocky hills of considerable elevation.
We had an excellent déjeûner, for which we were quite ready, having only taken the usual early cup of coffee. The genial influence of this meal had the effect of putting us on the best footing with our fellow-voyagers. Pacing the deck afterwards with the Corsican priest, we were joined by the stout Englishman. Observing our disappointment at hearing we should be probably baulked of shooting in Corsica, he expressed a hope that we would extend our excursion to Tuscany, where, he was good enough to say, he would show us sport. He had been settled there many years, and was now returning to his family by way of Leghorn. Under a somewhat homely exterior, which had puzzled us at first as to his position, we found our new acquaintance to be a man of refined taste, great simplicity, as well as urbanity, of manners, and keenly alive to the beautiful in nature and art. Such a specimen of the hearty old English gentleman, unchanged—I was about to say uncontaminated—by long residence abroad, it has been rarely my lot to meet with.
On rounding a projecting headland, we peeped into the mouth of Toulon harbour, and every eye and glass were directed to the heights crowned with forts, and the bold mountain masses towering above them.
Presently, we were threading the channel between the main land and the Hyères Islands. They appeared to us a paradise of verdure, on which the eye, weary of gazing at the bare and furrowed mountain-sides bounding this coast, rested with delight. One imagined orange groves and myrtle bowers, impervious to the summer’s sun and sheltered by the lofty ridges from the northern blasts—all this verdure fringing the edge of a bright and tideless sea. Elsewhere, except rarely in the hollows, the mountain ranges extending along this coast exhibit no signs of vegetation; the whole mass appearing, with the sun full on them, not only scorched but actually burnt to the colour of kiln-dried bricks.
All the afternoon we continued running at the steamer’s full speed along the shores of France and Italy. Notwithstanding their arid and sterile aspect, nothing can be finer than the mountain ranges which bound this coast, as every one who has crossed them in travelling from Nice well knows. Glimpses, too, successively of Frejus, Cannes, and Nice, more or less distant, as, crossing the Gulf of Genoa, we gradually increased our distance from the shore, together with a capital dinner, were pleasant interludes to the grand spectacle of Alps piled on Alps in endless succession, and glowing a fiery red, which all the waters over which we flew—deep, dark, or azure—could not quench.
Towards evening there were evident tokens in the sky, on the water, and in the vessel’s motion, of a change of weather. We were threatened with a stormy night; and as we now began to lose the shelter of the land, holding a course somewhat to the S.E. in order to round the northern point of Corsica, there was no reason to regret that the passage across the Tuscan sea would be performed while we were in our berths.
However, we walked the deck long after the other passengers had gone below; enjoying the fresh breeze, though it was no soft zephyr wafting sweet odours from the Ausonian shore. It is a sublime thing to stand on the poop of a good ship when she is surging through the waves at ten knots an hour in utter darkness, whether impelled by wind or steam; especially when the elements are in strife. Nothing can give a higher idea of the power of man to control them. With no horizon, not a star visible in the vault above, and only the white curl on the crest of the boiling waves, glimmering in our wake, on—on, we rush, the ship dipping and rising over the long swells, and dashing floods of water and clouds of spray from her bows.
But whither are we driving through these dark waters, and this impenetrable, and seemingly boundless, gloom? The eye rests on the light in the binnacle. We stoop to examine the compass; the card marks S.S.E. Imagination expands the dark horizon. It is not boundless: the island mountain-tops loom in the distance. They beckon us on; we realise them now; at dawn the grey peaks of Cape Corso will be unveiled; we shall dream of them to-night.
One of the watch struck the hour on the bell. “It is ten o’clock; let us turn in.” There is an inviting glimmer through the cabin skylights. We are better off in this floating hotel than has often been our lot, baffling with storm and tempest, benighted, weary, cold and wet, in rough roads, forest or desert waste, with dubious hopes of shelter and comfort at the end of our march.
We paused for a moment, leaning over the brass rail which protected the quarter deck. Below, on the main deck, a number of French soldiers, wrapped in their grey coats, were huddled together, cowering under the bulwarks, or wherever they could find shelter from the bitter night wind.
The cabin lamps shed a cheerful light, reflected by the highly-polished furniture and fittings. All the passengers were in their berths. We had chosen ours near the door for fresher air. My companion climbed to his cot in the upper tier, above mine.
“If you wake first, call me at daylight. We shall be off the coast of Corsica. Felicissima notte!”