What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge

Author:Susan Coolidge [Coolidge, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2005-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.

"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyes

fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realize

that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas before

us, and we shall see the sights they saw,—Circe's Cape and the Isles of

the Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?"

The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was slowly steaming

out of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy sunset.

The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the engine's

throb. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points of

phosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a great

silver planet burned like a signal lamp.

"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I don't

want to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in her

mother's lap.

"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some missionary

may have come across him and converted him. If he were good, you

wouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy.

"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot of

missionaries to make him good, I should think. One all alone would be

afraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?"

"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears and look

the other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who was in

the highest spirits.—"And oh, Polly dear, there is one delightful thing

I forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in Leghorn

all day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of time to

run up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower and

everything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am so glad

I didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to say." She

gave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it again as

it fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might have done.

"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you never seem out

of sorts or tired of things."

"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I be,

Polly dear?"

Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,—a trick

picked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked it;

it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel nearer

Katy's age.

"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,—"far over, I mean, so

that we can see it?"

"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I shall lose

all my confidence in human nature."

Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be impaired. There

stood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in Pisa,

next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the pictures and

the alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must topple

over, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs.

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