Costantino was resigned. He was going towards a cruel and unknown fate, but he never despaired, for at the bottom of his heart he was convinced he would soon be freed. The bustle of passengers and crew, the clank of the chains, the steamship’s first motion as it got underway aroused a childlike curiosity in him. He had never been on board a ship before. Sometimes, as a boy, he had scanned the horizon gazing at the ash-grey strip of the Mediterranean, dotted here and there by the wing of a sail. He had dreamed of crossing those faraway seas to unknown lands, to the golden cities of the mainland. He could read and write, and from the prints in a schoolbook he knew of St Peter’s in Rome and of the ancient city of Jerusalem. Whenever from among the thickets of Monte Bellu he had gazed out at the grey line of the Mediterranean, it was to Jerusalem that he hoped to go. Now, here he was crossing the sea, but how different from his dreams it was. Yet so splendid was Jerusalem to him that, if it had been there he were going, even as a chained and convicted prisoner sentenced to expiate a crime, he would have been happy.

The steamer rolled and pitched as it ploughed on through the ceaseless crashing of the waves. The prisoners whispered among themselves, some joking and laughing. Costantino drowsed and dreamed as ever that he was back at home. He had just been freed and, so as to give his wife the joy of surprise, he was returning home without letting her know. Giovanna kept saying, ‘But this is a dream, this is a dream!’ The expenses of the trial had stripped the house bare of everything, even the bed. But that did not matter. All the riches of the world were nothing in comparison with the joy of liberty, the happiness of living again with Giovanna and little Martino. But Costantino felt tired, so he curled up in the baby’s cradle, and the cradle was rocking, all by itself, faster and faster. Giovanna laughed and said, ‘Careful you don’t fall out, Costantino, my darling.’ And the cradle rocked more and more violently.

At first he laughed too. Then all at once he began to feel ill, his head was spinning, and he fell out of the cradle onto the ground. He awoke feeling seasick. The sea was rough. The steamer climbed and plunged down mountains of water. Waves broke over the third-class passenger deck.

All the convicts were ill. Some tried to go on joking, others cursed. Costantino’s companion, a man with a smooth yellow face, whimpered like a baby.

‘Oh,’ he groaned, clutching his drooping head in his hands and gasping with terror. ‘I dreamt I was at home, and now – and now – dear St Francis, have pity on me!’