“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.