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Martine to Deeds; I simply said that it gave me pleasure to recall her memory and that in venturing into Sicily I felt that I was accepting too late an invitation which I should have taken up years before. And also I expressed my misgivings about this way of doing it. I had begun to think that my decision to join the Carousel was utterly mad. “I shall loathe the group, I feel it. I was not made for group travel.” Deeds looked at me with a quizzical air and said, after a pause: “Yes, one always does at first. It’s just like joining a new battalion. You think: God, what horrible people, what ghastly faces and prognathous jaws, what badly aspected Saturns! Jesus, save me! But then after a time it wears off. You get to know them and respect them. And after a couple of battles you don’t want to part with them. You see, you’ll be sorry when it comes time to say goodbye.” I didn’t believe a word of it, but thepresence of this quiet reserved Army officer was comforting, simply because we had a good deal in common and had lived through the same momentous epoch. “Remains to be seen,” I said warily and Deeds unfolded his Times and scrutinized the cricket scores with the air of a priest concentrating on Holy Writ. I was tempted to ask him how Hampshire was doing, but it would have been false to do so; I had been out of touch with cricket for more than fifteen years and it was possible that Hampshire no longer existed as a county eleven. I turned and watched the sea unrolling beneath us, and the distant smudges of the island printing themselves on the hazy trembling horizon. Deeds grunted from time to time. In his mind’s eye he could see green grass, hear the clicking of cricket balls.…
    The evening had begun to fall softly and the grey-green theatrical light of the approaching sunset had begun to color everything. The dusk seemed to be rising from the ground like a faint grey smoke. From this height the sea looked motionless and the relief map of the island’s southern slopes had attained a fixity of tone which made it look fabricated, unreal. Indeed, to be sincere, it was not vastly different from flying over Crete or Rhodes—at least not yet. I murmured something like this to Deeds who agreed but said, “Wait till we reach Etna—that’s an individual sort of feature.” So wait I did, drinking a bitter blush of Campari. We were slowly descending now in a carefully graduated descent: this could only be judged by the fact that theminutiae below us began suddenly to come into focus, to become coherent forms like farms and lakes and valleys. “There!” said my companion at long last and Etna took the center of the stage to capture our admiring vision. It was very close indeed—for we had come down low to prepare the run in on Catania airport. It looked like a toy—but a rather dangerous one. Moreover, it gave a small puff of dark smoke—a languid gesture of welcome, as if it had heard we were coming. Though we were flying not directly over it (I presumed because of the hot currents which it siphoned off), we were not too far to the side to avoid looking down into the charred crater—a black pit in the recesses of which something obscure boiled and bubbled. Then, as the range spread out a little I saw that it was not simply one crater but a whole network of volcanoes of which Etna was the most considerable in size and beauty. But everywhere there were other little holes in the earth crust, for all the world as if the whole pie had burst out because of the heat in minor geysers. It was beautiful in its toy-like way, this range, and yet I could not avoid a slight feeling of menace about it. There was really no reason, in spite of the occasional severity of an outburst of lava. Etna had become an almost domesticated showpiece, and we were promised an “optional” ascent to the crater in the last week of the tour.
    I was reminded,