A Spirit in Prison | Page 4

Carelessness and happiness make a swift appeal to young hearts, and
this voice was careless, and sounded very happy. There was a
deliberate gruffness in it, a determination to be manly, which proved
the vocalist to be no man. Vere knew at once that a boy was singing,
and she felt that she must see him.
She got up, went into the little garden at the edge of the cliff, and
looked over the wall.
There was a boat moving slowly towards her, not very far away. In it
were three figures, all stripped for diving, and wearing white cotton
drawers. Two were sitting on the gunwale with their knees drawn up
nearly to their chins. The third was standing, and with a languid, but
strong and regular movement, was propelling the boat forward with
big- bladed oars. This was the singer, and as the boat drew nearer Vere
could see that he had the young, lithe form of a boy.
While she watched, leaning down from her eyrie, the boat and the song
stopped, and the singer let go his oars and turned to the men behind
him. The boat had reached a place near the rocks that was good ground
for /frutti di mare/.
Vere had often seen the divers in the Bay of Naples at their curious toil.

Yet it never ceased to interest her. She had a passion for the sea, and for
all things connected with it. Now she leaned a little lower over the wall,
with her eyes fixed on the boat and its occupants.
Upon the water she saw corks floating, and presently one of the men
swung himself round and sat facing the sea, with his back to the boat
and his bare legs dipping into the water. The boy had dropped down to
the bottom of the craft. His hands were busy arranging clothes, or
tackle, and his lusty voice again rang out to the glory of "Napoli, bella
Napoli." There was something infectious in his happy-go-lucky
light-heartedness. Vere smiled as she listened, but there was a
wistfulness in her heart. At that moment a very common desire of
young and vigorous girls assailed her--the desire to be a boy; not a boy
born of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of aristocratic
young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly dressed, or scarcely dressed at
all boy of the people.
She was often light-hearted, careless. But was she ever as light- hearted
and careless as that singing boy? She supposed herself to be free. But
was she, could she ever be at liberty as he was?
The man who had been dipping his feet in the sea rested one hand on
the gunwale, let his body droop forward, dropped into the water,
paddled for a moment, reached one of the floating corks, turned over
head downwards, describing a circle which showed his
chocolate-colored back arched, kicked up his feet and disappeared. The
second man lounged lazily from the boat into the sea and imitated him.
The boy sat still and went on singing. Vere felt disappointed. Was not
he going to dive too? She wanted him to dive. If she were that boy she
would go in, she felt sure of it, before the men. It must be lovely to sink
down into the underworld of the sea, to rifle from the rocks their fruit,
that grew thick as fruit on the trees. But the boy--he was lazy, good for
nothing but singing. She was half ashamed of him. Whimsically, and
laughing to herself at her own absurdity, she lifted her two hands,
brown with the sun, to her lips, and cried with all her might:
"Va dentro, pigro! Va dentro!"

As her voice died away, the boy stopped singing, sprang into the sea,
kicked up his feet and disappeared.
Vere was conscious of a thrill that was like a thrill of triumph.
"He obeyed me!" she thought.
A pleasant feeling of power came to her. From her eyrie on the rock she
was directing these strange sea doings. She was ruling over the men of
the sea.
The empty boat swayed softly on the water, but its three former
occupants were all hidden by the sea. It seemed as if they would never
come up again. Vere began to hold her breath as they were holding
theirs. At last a dark head rose above the surface, then another. The two
men paddled for a minute, drawing the air into their lungs. But the boy
did not reappear.
As the seconds passed, Vere began to feel proud of him. He was doing
that which she would have tried to do had she been a boy. He was
rivalling the men.
Another second slipped away--and another. He was more than rivalling,
he was