Robert Barr

“ You know me as a true mariner who will not undervalue the goods you sell. Learn, then, I am willing to pay the price, for the sake of the poor fellows coming after me who battle for their bread with the revengeful sea. Better one man in eternal torment than that unborn generations should be bereft of this guiding finger of enchanted iron. ”

“ It was at this time that the devil sought to make Flavio entirely his own, and succeeded. He took the form of a shipwrecked mariner, an object craftily purposed to engage the sympathy of such a person as Gioja. A wild storm had driven a strange ship on the rocks, and the good people of Positano were collected along the front, watching the waves, and bearing some hope that they might perhaps profit in goods by the breakup of the derelict, the sea being generous to this devout population in other directions than the furnishing of fish. ”

“ So Positano was, and is to-day, a seaport populated by women, children and old men. Yet it has flourished, and has not decreased in population. Positano is proud of three things,—the beauty of its women, the number of its children and the fame of Flavius Gioja, inventor of the mariner's compass. ”

“ He set up a little wooden cross at the head, and laid a flat slab of stone upon the grave, and carved rudely on the stone with his chisel:
"Every man has some touch of righteousness in him. O Lord Christ, be merciful to one unjustly slain by the populace, even though thy saints, suffering less than Thou, frown upon him."
Flavius Gioja, in the silence of his own house, worked night and day with the magic stone, perfecting the new instrument, abandoning the basin of water and poising the needle on a delicate point, where it quivered to the north. ”

“ Gioja did as he was bid.
"I see no change in either," he said at last. "The color of the stone comes not off on the iron, neither does the needle wear away as it might on a sharpening block."
"Nevertheless the change has taken place, although invisible to your eye or to mine. A strange virtue has passed unseen from stone to metal. Balance the needle carefully upon the cork and let the cork float, carrying the needle above the surface of the water." ”

“ If the sea is too boisterous for you, calm it down, confound you!"
With that he made his way to the stern again, leaving Anthony to drag through the waves as best he might. Treatment certainly not to be defended by me, even at this late day. The crew was panic-stricken. Each member implored the irate captain to pull in the slack and restore the saint to his place, but Gioja was as deaf to supplications as Antonius himself had been, and his underlings dared not attempt to coerce him, as they had tried to do with the saint. ”

“ And then, as if to add insult to injury, there came, riding a spar, a clinging man calling loudly for help when not temporarily overwhelmed by the spume that lashed over him. Now such a victim is unlucky at best, and there is more chance of catching some plague from him than the acquiring of treasure, when, as was likely, he came from the East. ”

“ Then he related to the foreigner the story of the storm and the fog, and the latter part of the recital appeared to move the dying man strangely, not that he seemed to care much about saints, for how could that be expected of Satan, or to mourn the absence of some holy friar, which also is proof of his grim origin. He asked Gioja to prop him up with pillows, and this done, he drew the dark, mysterious stone from his bosom.
"It is the way of ignorance to use roughly those who would befriend mankind. ”

“ It has been supposed that the mariner's compass, although it enriched Flavius Gioja, exerted a baleful influence upon the men of Positano, for since that day they have been scattered to the ends of the earth, many hawking their wares throughout Italy and returning annually on their chief church festival; others in the Americas or distant lands come to Positano only when they are old. ”

“ THE CURSE OF POSITANO
By ROBERT BARR
IT is bad for a man quarrel with the saints, and still worse if he accepts the aid of the devil in substitution for the countenance of the children of God, thus withdrawn from him. For Satan comes in many a guise other than that of the roaring lion, and it behooves us all to walk warily lest we be cozened by him. ”