Explore "The Laestrygonians" by Aleksandr Kuprin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Italians did not conceal the purpose of their visit: they came to Balaklava with the express intention of exploring the scene of the naval disaster, and, if circumstances permitted, to raise from the bottom all of the more valuable remnants -- mainly, of course, the legendary golden treasure. The expedition was headed by Giuseppe Restucci, an engineer and an inventor of a special diving apparatus. He was a middle-aged, tall, taciturn man, always dressed in gray, with a gray, oblong face and almost white hair, with a cataract on one eye -- in general, looking more like an Englishman than an Italian. He put up at the hotel on the beach, and of an evening, when you called on him, he treated you to Chianti and to the verses of his favorite poet, Steccheti:
"A woman's love is like coal, which burns when aglow, and soils when cold. "