While we were moving along the coast of Albania until late in the afternoon, there was nothing new to look out for; and so there was time to get acquainted with the ship and the passengers, to get one's bearings. There were the rules for passengers printed in five parallel columns--English, French, German, Italian, and Greek--emphasizing the cosmopolitan constituency of the travelling public. In Europe, and especially in the Orient, it always pays to read regulations, particularly the English column, to see how foreigners wrestle with our language. Rule 3 said: "Every damage is to be made good by the person who _dit_ it." Rule 11: "It is prohibited to any passenger to _middle_ with the command and direction of the vessel." As I had always trusted to the captain to run his own ship, I felt safe on that point. Particular anxiety for the ladies ran through the rules. One rule was: "Gentlemen are not allowed to enter the cabins of the ladies," and as a final snapper at the end of the last rule was this sentence: "Passengers having a right to be treated like persons of education will no doubt conform themselves to the rules of good society by respecting their fellow-travellers and paying a due regard to the fair sex." As we had no ladies at all on board until the journey was about half finished it began to seem as if they had been frightened away. The captain, like most of the captains of this line, was of Slavic origin. Of other languages than his own he knew only Italian. In this he did all his "cussing" at every port; and it seemed to produce everywhere the proper effect. His gentlest conversational tone was like the blast of a trumpet and could be heard from stem to stern. I took an early opportunity to go up to the bridge when he was there, and remark apologetically that I was travelling _per vedere qualche cosa_. His laconic reply was, "_Ma perchè no?_" With that I felt myself installed on the bridge, and I spent more hours there during the voyage than any one of the officers. Perhaps the third-class passengers standing below suspected me of attempting to "middle with the command and direction of the vessel." Toward evening we passed Akrokeraunia, the massive headland ending off a chain of mountains back of it over six thousand feet high, in antiquity the cynosure of sailors crossing by the shortest line from Italy to Greece. The modern name, Capo Duro, suggests its pitilessness. There it stands running out to the northwest, and so bidding defiance to the strongest wind of the region. The sea has beaten against it since there was a sea; it has broken away a good deal of it, if we may judge by a single isolated island thrown out in front of it. The high mountains seem saying to the sea, "You waste your vain fury on those lower rocks. What will you do when you come to us?" But it is the business of the patient sea to help "draw down the Aonian hills," and until there shall be no more sea Capo Duro must yield inch by inch.