The Veil

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II THE VEILED CITY (note?A period of nineteen years has elapsed between Part I and Part II.) CHAPTER VI CHE ORA ? called a fresh voice from a second- class berth on board the steamboat Aurore of the Navigation Mixte, which plies between Sicily and North Africa. Then, as the half-awakened traveller...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II THE VEILED CITY (note?A period of nineteen years has elapsed between Part I and Part II.) CHAPTER VI CHE ORA ? called a fresh voice from a second- class berth on board the steamboat Aurore of the Navigation Mixte, which plies between Sicily and North Africa. Then, as the half-awakened traveller realised that he was no longer in the land of soft vowels which had been still in sight as he had left deck the previous evening, he changed the demand into French. Six o'clock, monsieur, said the passing steward. Land insight? But, yes, monsieur. The young Sicilian sprang out of his berth. The German above him grunted and turned over again to sleep. Riccardo Bastiagnini looked at him, for the red curtains had been drawn back to give the perspiring sleeper air. He had thrown off his coverlet and displayed his whole unshapely form in ill-fitting pajamas. These Germans The young man ran his hand contentedly down the muscular outline of his own hip. Fifteen minutes later he stood on deck, his eyes fixed on the horizon. The sea was the ardent blue-purple of the South; he had seen it as blue a thousand sunny days at Palermo, gentian blue, turquoise blue, veronica blue; wine purple, sunset purple, and the purple of storms: broken by the greens of chrysoprases and emeralds. The sun, glittering like a mass of sequins on the waves and blinding him from the white deck, meant as little to him as water to the lotus, or air to the lark; it was his element; he was a child of the sun. But to him there wassomething new even in the aspect of the sea and sun, for they were within sight of Africa. His eyes were fixed with eagerness on the nearing land, rising hardly the breadth of a butterfly's wing from the sea. That strip held his future life. He gazed ...