“ Dove noi siamo? ”
“Yes, where are we?” I impatiently repeated.
But there was no answer still.
“Will you speak when you are told?” Exclaimed my uncle, shaking the urchin by the ears. “ Come si noma questa isola? ”
“ Stromboli ,” replied the little herdboy, slipping out of Hans’ hands, and scudding into the plain across the olive trees.
We were hardly thinking of that. Stromboli! What an effect this unexpected name produced upon my mind! We were in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea, on an island of the Aeolian archipelago, in the ancient Strongyle, where Aeolus kept the winds and the storms chained up, to be let loose at his will. And those distant blue mountains in the east were the mountains of Calabria. And that threatening volcano far away in the south was the fierce Etna.
“Stromboli, Stromboli!” I repeated.
My uncle kept time to my exclamations with hands and feet, as well as with words. We seemed to be chanting in chorus!
What a journey we had accomplished! How marvellous! Having entered by one volcano, we had issued out of another more than two thousand miles from Snæfells and from that barren, faraway Iceland! The strange chances of our expedition had carried us into the heart of the fairest region in the world. We had exchanged the bleak regions of perpetual snow and of impenetrable barriers of ice for those of brightness and “the rich hues of all glorious things.” We had left over our heads the murky sky and cold fogs of the frigid zone to revel under the azure sky of Italy!