The captain looked critically in the direction towards which they were sailing.
"Dirty weather coming, I think."
"Yes, I see," said Cardo; "I had not noticed it before, though. How inky black the sky is over there! And the sea as black, and that white streak on the line of the horizon!"
"We shall have a bit of a toss," said the captain. "Couldn't expect to get to Australia on a mill pond."
"Mill pond do you call the swells we have had the last few days?"
"Almost," replied the captain, leaving him unceremoniously, and shouting some orders to his crew.
Thus left, Cardo fell again into a deep reverie. Yes, it looked black before them! "But I have always wished to see a storm at sea, and if I only had Valmai with me, I should be joyous and exultant; but instead of that, I am alone, and have a strange foreboding of some evil to come. I can't be well, though I'm sure I don't know where I ail, for I feel alright, and I eat like a horse."
"Come, Mr. Wynne," said one of the ladies, who had marked his serious looks, "we must really call you to account! You have fallen into a brown study again. You must let us cheer you up. We can't have the very life of the party losing his spirits. Now if you had left your wife at home, as Mr. Dawson has!"
"I have done that," said Cardo, "but I am not at all likely to fall into low spirits. I have never in my life known what that means; but a man, more especially a married man, must have his moments of serious thought sometimes."
"Yes, of course," said the lady, with a considerable diminution of interest in "the handsome Mr. Wynne!" "You have left your little ones too, I suppose?"