Later in the morning J. went on shore with the doctor, in search of sheets and towels. He was much chagrined that he had not brought his own, and I that I had not sent them--we shall know better next time. They left Naples that afternoon, and early the next morning (the 22nd of February) the “Celtic,” her white sides shining, her rigging gay with bunting in honor of Washington’s birthday, sailed through the Straits and into the harbor of Messina. As they approached the Faro, the officers gathered on the poop deck. Belknap’s keen eyes, sailor’s eyes that see so much more than others, scrutinized the water-front. “Things are waking up!” he said. “There’s a schooner taking on a cargo of lemons! That tramp steamer is discharging lumber.” Half a dozen ships lay in the old harbor of Zancle, unloading all manner of building materials. Yes, trade had come back to the indispensable city, as it always has done after every earthquake since the one that frightened Ulysses and the Greeks of his time; the ancients made stories and myths about that earthquake that still delight us. Ulysses landed in Sicily, you remember, with twelve of his men and entered the cave of Polyphemus, a terrible one-eyed giant who tended his giant sheep on the slopes of Mt. Etna, the burning mountain that stood over the workshop of Vulcan; you can see the smoke, sometimes the fire of the smithy, coming out of the hole at the top of the mountain to this day. The giant killed and ate six of the adventurers; he would have killed them all but for the crafty Ulysses, who made the Cyclops drunk and while he slept put out his single eye with a red-hot pole. Then Ulysses and his six remaining companions concealed themselves under the bellies of the giant sheep; and so, when Polyphemus let out his flock to graze, they escaped. (I myself have seen this adventure pictured in an ancient sculpture at Palermo.) When the Cyclops found his prisoners were gone, he roared with anger and pursued them, hurling great rocks after them; but being blind his aim was not good, and three of the boulders fell into the sea, where you can find them today by Aci Castello. One has a round hole like an eye, through which the sunlight shines as it once did through the single eye of the Cyclops. All this means that some Greek sailors “in the dim red dawn of man” really were caught in an earthquake and were so greatly frightened that their descendants not only made myths and legends about it, but remembered it. Centuries after, when Theocles, the Greek merchant, drew up his little fleet of vessels on the [Illustration: TENENTE DI VASCELLO ALFREDO BROFFERIO. _Page 223._] [Illustration: LIEUTENANT COMMANDER REGINALD ROWAN BELKNAP, U. S. N. _Page 223._] [Illustration: REGGIO. WRECK OF RAILROAD. _Page 151._] [Illustration: STREET IN REGGIO. _Page 133._]