The young man again sheltered his eyes with one hand, looking earnestly forth towards the ocean.
"Nothing," he said at last. "I have searched that pile of clouds before, and find only deeper blackness now."
"Searched it before! Did you expect something, then?" questioned the old man, turning a pair of bright, gray eyes upon his companion. "Did you expect something?"
As he spoke those eyes grew wild, and the penetrating glance, which he bent upon the youth from under his heavy brows, struck to the young heart, which was open to a new impression every moment.
"Nay, I do not know. It can be nothing but that unaccountable restlessness which never leaves me in peace when a storm is howling over the ocean. I could not stay in-doors—indeed, I never can on such days—and, without knowing why, came up here to look this whirlwind in the face, which, in return, is almost lifting me from my feet!"
The old man did not heed him, but stooped forward, looking towards the ocean, while the rain beat against his face, dripping down in great drops over his gray eye-brows, and deluging the hand with which he strove to clear the blinding moisture away.
"It is coming! the clouds lift—the darkness is cleft—the bosom of the deep heaves with life! Young man, look again! See you not the faint outlines of a ship, spars, hull, and sails, reefed close—there—there, riding in the bosom of the storm?"
He broke off with this exclamation, and drew his tall figure upright, pointing towards the sea with a gesture of almost solemn exultation.
"Is that a ship, I say, or a bleak skeleton of the thing I have been waiting for?"
"Upon my life—upon my soul, ten thousand pardons—but I think it really is a ship, or some evil spirit has pencilled the skeleton of his devil's craft in the clouds."