Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXXI. The Regatta
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days, before the curse of America had fallen on
Capri, almost the whole male population went
coral fishing in “Barbaria,” off Tunis and
Tripoli. It was a terrible job, full of hardships
and privations, even dangers, for many of them
never returned to their island. It took Pacciale
twenty years of toil on the sea to put together
the three hundred lire needed for a man to take
a wife. One hundred for the boats and the
fishing nets, two hundred for the bed, the couple
of chairs, and a suit of Sunday clothes to get
married in, the Madonna would see to the rest.
The girl waited for years, spinning and weaving
the house linen which it fell to her to provide.
Like everybody else Pacciale had also inherited
from his father a strip of land, in his case a mere
strip of bare rock, by the water’s edge, a thousand
feet below Damecuta. The earth he had carried
in basketfuls on his back, year after year, till
there was enough soil to plant a few vines and
prickly pears. He never made a drop of wine,
for the young grapes were regularly burnt by
the salt spray when the S.W. was blowing. Now
and then he came home with a few new potatoes,
the first to ripen on the island, which he presented
to me with great pride. He spent all his spare
time down in his masseria, scratching the rock
with his heavy mattock or sitting on a stone
looking out on the sea with his clay pipe in his
mouth. Now and then I used to climb down the
precipitous cliffs, where a goat would hesitate
where to put its foot, to pay him a visit to his
huge delight. Just below our feet was a grotto,
inaccessible from the sea and unknown even
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