"The great contention of the sea and skies
Parted our fellowship;--But, hark! a sail!"
Cassio
Whatever may have been the result of the vice-governatore's further
inquiries and speculations that night, they were not known. After
consuming an hour in the lower part of the town, in and around the port,
he and the podesta sought their homes and their pillows, leaving the
lugger riding quietly at her anchor in the spot where she was last
presented to the reader's attention. If Raoul Yvard and Ghita had
another interview, too, it was so secretly managed as to escape all
observation, and can form no part of this narrative.
A Mediterranean morning, at midsummer, is one of those balmy and
soothing periods of the day that affect the mind as well as the body.
Everywhere we have the mellow and advancing light that precedes the
appearance of the sun--the shifting hues of the sky--that pearly
softness that seems to have been invented to make us love the works of
God's hand and the warm glow of the brilliant sun; but it is not
everywhere that these fascinating changes occur, on a sea whose blue
vies with the darkest depths of the void of space, beneath a climate
that is as winning as the scenes it adorns, and amid mountains whose
faces reflect every varying shade of light with the truth and the poetry
of nature. Such a morning as this last was that which succeeded the
night with which our tale opened, bringing with it the reviving
movements of the port and town.
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