The Charmer shook his head, and acknowledged his doubt whether St. Anthony would be permitted to keep them all within the bounds of Adam’s Bridge, or whether some would be left at large between the north banks and the shore. The south banks would be safe; but the north, alas! were those in which Marana was interested.
“Father! the monsoon will surely not arrive too early?”
“Not till April is nearly past,” he replied, cheerfully. “It is even likely that there may be complaints in the south of drought, from the delay of the rains. There will be no storms in our fishery.”
“I will ask Father Anthony to praise the saints.—Will the fishery be rich?”
“To some, and not to others. This is commonly the case; and I cannot discover whose countenances will be sad in Aripo, and whose merry voices will sing along the shore at Condatchy, when the last signal-gun has brought back the last boat.”
There was a long pause before Marana ventured to utter the more important question,
“Father! will any one be waited for in the paradise under the sea?”
The Charmer rubbed his hand over his brow, and said that this was the point he was endeavouring to ascertain when his daughter entered. His indications were at variance; and whether the fishery was to be fatal to none, or to more than he had put the question for, he could not decide.—Marana felt that she must request Father Anthony to intercede with, as well as praise the saints.
“Is it a blind day to you, father?” she inquired, struck by his tone of doubt on almost every topic she had introduced.
“My blind days are many,” he replied, “and the blindness troubles me. Marcair looks doubtfully upon me, and I look doubtfully upon myself,—because I warned him that a wild elephant would tread his rice-ground seven nights ago. Marcair lighted eleven fires, and thirty-two friends kept watch with him for three nights; and not a twig was heard to snap in the jungle: and those who laid ear to the ground say that not so much as a panther trod within a mile.”