Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/20

become one with its "mountain of old name;" there is nothing to be seen of the romantic island but its giant volcano, nothing left to recall any one of its clustering multitude of classic legends, save only the earliest and sternest of them all. The home of nymph and shepherd, of sacred fountain and love-sick river god, has vanished, and the everlasting prison of the buried Titan alone remains. But that grim donjon glooms at our departing vessel for long. It is still faintly visible when the pale lilac of the sky has melted into a still paler blue, when the flame-tipped purple of the sunset-wrack has become a lustreless brown, when the silver sheen of twilight has faded from the darkening waters. It is a race between the mists and the night to hide it first, and it would be hard to say which wins. Dusk or the sea-haze does at last hide it, leaving visible only the glimmering phantom of the Italian mainland, which itself, also, is soon swallowed up in the night. Then the moon glides, queen-