The Adriatic is our private estate. The cruisers make use of it as if Austria did not exist. They ascend it, circle about, stop in front of the islands, challenge the coasts, without a single visible enemy’s attacking them. Doubtless the submarines come out daily from Cattaro in quest of the prize booty that our vessels would make. But either chance or our vigilance has prevented the disaster. We watch, we are worn out; nothing happens. Sometimes in the West, low on the water, trails the Italian coast; smoke floats over Otranto or Brindisi; for forty days this is all we have known of human activity. The lighthouse of Santa Marin of Leuca marks the uttermost point of Latin soil; it is a desolate object, like a pale needle stuck into the blue air. By night, its light falls on the veils of the horizon. It is one of the lonely friends of our solitude. Towards the eastern coasts other friends watch our passage--the gaunt peaks of Albania or Epirus, or even the Ionian Archipelago, that delicate jewel of stone. Albania and Epirus! Famous but sinister names! Wherever Islam rules dwells devastation. The bases of the mountains are buried in the sea, and they look colossal; death lives on their gray slopes. A warm sun, however, shines on them, and busy hands may be tending vineyards and olive orchards. Yet one sees only masses of rocks, and the scars of mountain-streams. Here and there a bald yellowish circle stains the mass of stone. In that spot flourished in former times an Albanian or Epirote village. Fire destroyed it, and the fury of men has left it only a charred waste. A dizzy silence comes from these mountains. It falls and rolls over the blue water, so hard a blue one thinks a hammer might strike sparks from it. No one lives in these somber regions. Along the bays and inlets barks with Levantine sails scud before the wind, passing by in all possible haste. These barks carry mountaineers crowded in their holds like sheep in a pen. In these brigand realms life is so unsafe that even the brigands themselves prefer the hazards of the sea to journeys by land. Our cruiser halts these tiny boats. Then the human cargo bursts out from the hold, and their distress shows that they think their last hour has come. Clothed in sheepskins, armed with daggers and pistols, these rascals conceal in their hearts a world of unknown crime; every time they find it profitable they are ready to massacre and betray. Their dark minds do not know who we are nor why we have come. We can only be executioners, equipped with irresistible weapons.