While we were on the forecastle head, I noticed little Disalvo come up from below with a long, twisted-up, slender, newspaper in his hands. For a long time he stood by the rail intently watching the shore. When we were off Scilla he lit a match in the shelter of a ventilator and lighted his improvised torch, and I realized that he was going to try to signal his friends on shore. I looked to the land and saw a light moving up and down near a cottage south of the town where I knew he lived. But his answer was a failure and nearly a catastrophe. The strong wind caught the first blaze of the paper and literally rent the burning torch apart, sweeping the burning fragments aft the length of the ship. Fires were narrowly avoided in two places, and the first officer came down from the bridge and read the horror-smitten boy a terrific lecture. Far into the night we lay on deck, dreading to go below into the reeking atmosphere there. When we did at last, the tumult of crying babies, of people who could not sleep and so essayed to play harmonicas and sing, was almost unbearable. The rule of men and women being separated had not been enforced, and so Antonio and I stayed near the women of our party for their protection,—not from the other passengers, but from the ship’s people. At last dawn came, and the haggard look on my wife’s face told me what she had passed through. When we went on deck we were within sight of Capri, and two hours later we slid under the shadow of Vesuvius into the beautiful bay of Naples, and when we had snuggled in beside the Palermo steamer at the municipal quay, unloading its throng of emigrants before the custom-house, we, too, were dumped off in the hot sun and left for hours in a broiling heat to await our turn to be conducted to the first steps of that wonderful and interesting process the emigrant goes through in Naples. CHAPTER XI THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES In a half-hearted, divided-responsibility sort of way, the Italian government, the steamship companies and the United States authorities endeavor to do at Naples, the world’s greatest port of emigrant embarkation, what should be done thoroughly a stage sooner, viz., to sort out those who are likely to be turned back at Ellis Island and to prevent them from sailing. How much easier, cheaper and more effective to have done it at home! So far as this narrative of the experiences of my wife and myself and our family party is concerned, I would estimate that stage of the process which was reached at Naples as of equal or greater importance than the Ellis Island process proper.