NAPLES BAT AND FISH-MARKET. 101 



of opaque clouds. The change is rapid : at twelve it is 

 quite warm ; at two the air is chilly and damp ; a mizzling 

 rain has begun ; the horizon becomes more and more 

 bounded ; at length Capri is shut out from view ; the sea is 

 again on the work, and all on shore anticipate a renewal 

 of last night's turmoil. The tailless canvas kites, which 

 have hovered over the Marina since the morning, disap- 

 pear, the players at La Cava and Morra are no longer 

 heard in. the streets, cabs hurry helter-skelter to com- 

 plete their course and earn a fare before the sluices of 

 the sky are opened ; boats, once more lugged on land 

 and covered with tarpaulia, ring with the jocund sounds 

 of castanets, tambourines, and tarantella dancing ; wo- 

 men are obliged to stridulate louder at each other as the 

 wind rises and threatens to drown their voices in his 

 own roar; barcaroles loU in red cloth bonnets at the 

 doors of their huts ; a damaged steamer or unrigged fe- 

 lucca comes straining in. under bare poles, small craft 

 are aU fast anchored in the harbour, and the contracted 

 horizon is soon without a sail. Before night the water 

 is dashing over the fish-booths of the Santa Lucia, and 

 sending up white foam through the bars of the sea- 

 drains ; while in the momentary remissions of the gather- 

 ing storm, a crowd of little urchins of both sexes, naked 

 to the knees, dash from their hiding-places to glean up 

 spars, cephali, and sheU-fish, left by each receding wave 

 on the beach. With what impetuosity must those waves 

 be driven, to bound twenty feet above the object they 

 strike ! at what a depth, too, must they act, to rake up 

 the buried bivalves and launch them upon the upper 

 current which dashes them on shore ! It costs the poor 

 fisherman much labour and toil to dredge twelve feet for 

 these 'frutti di mare,'* now flung in such profusion on 

 the beach. 



* Tke common name for a great variety of shell-fisli. This 

 ' fruit of the sea' is gathered in September. At the beginning of 



