After this, for several days, Libeccio blew harder. No boats could leave
or come to Capri. From the piazza parapet we saw the wind scooping the
surface of the waves, and flinging spray-fleeces in sheets upon the
churning water. As they broke on Cape Campanella, the rollers climbed in
foam--how many feet?--and blotted out the olive trees above the
headland. The sky was always dark with hanging clouds and masses of
low-lying vapour, very moist, but scarcely raining--lightning without
thunder in the night.
Such weather is unexpected in the middle month of May, especially when
the olives are blackened by December storms, and the orange-trees
despoiled of foliage, and the tendrils of the vines yellow with cold.
The walnut-trees have shown no sign of making leaves. Only the figs seem
to have suffered little.
It had been settled that we should start upon the first seafaring dawn
for Ischia or Sorrento, according as the wind might set; and I was glad
when, early one morning, the captain of the _Serena_ announced a
moderate sirocco. When we reached the little quay we found the surf of
the libeccio still rolling heavily into the gulf. A gusty south-easter
crossed it, tearing spray-crests from the swell as it went plunging
onward. The sea was rough enough; but we made fast sailing, our captain
steering with a skill which it was beautiful to watch, his five oarsmen
picturesquely grouped beneath the straining sail. The sea slapped and
broke from time to time on our windward quarter, drenching the boat with
brine; and now and then her gunwale scooped into the shoulder of a wave
as she shot sidling up it. Meanwhile enormous masses of leaden-coloured
clouds formed above our heads and on the sea-line; but these were always
shifting in the strife of winds, and the sun shone through them
petulantly. As we climbed the rollers, or sank into their trough, the
outline of the bay appeared in glimpses, shyly revealed, suddenly
withdrawn from sight; the immobility and majesty of mountains contrasted
with the weltering waste of water round us--now blue and garish where
the sunlight fell, now shrouded in squally rain-storms, and then again
sullen beneath a vaporous canopy. Each of these vignettes was
photographed for one brief second on the brain, and swallowed by the
hurling drift of billows. The painter's art could but ill have rendered
that changeful colour in the sea, passing from tawny cloud-reflections
and surfaces of glowing violet to bright blue or impenetrable purple
flecked with boiling foam, according as a light-illuminated or a
shadowed facet of the moving mass was turned to sight.
Half-way across the gulf the sirocco lulled; the sail was lowered, and
we had to make the rest of the passage by rowing. Under the lee of
Ischia we got into comparatively quiet water; though here the beautiful
Italian sea was yellowish green with churned-up sand, like an unripe
orange. We passed the castle on its rocky island, with the domed church
which has been so often painted in _gouache_ pictures through the last
two centuries, and soon after noon we came to Casamicciola.