night, when there was a great storm and she sat beside her fire in the warrior's sepulchre, Leone howling by the kennel tomb where the Etruscan dog's ashes lay, there was a barque wrecked a mile or so down the coast; and when the weather cleared on the third day—for the white squalls of violent wind and rain upon these waters usually last three days—she went down to the beach to see the sea, that was sobbing still like a child after vain passion, and, washed up upon the driftwood and the glass-wrack of the rocks, she found a little boat bruised, but still serviceable; doubtless belonging to the lost brig that had foundered with all hands off the dark grim peaks of Monte Argentaro.
It was flotsam and jetsam, and she took it as a sea-gift.
It was light and shapely, and its two oars were in it. She dumbly thanked God for it; having a real boat, for what she had made for herself was but an awkward and unseaworthy tub, she felt as though wings had grown upon her shoulders. The sea seemed to be all her own, as it had seemed to the Tyrrhene pirates three thousand years before to be theirs and none others.
