CHAPTER XIX.
IN PLEASANT SUMMER WEATHER.
“Who could think of storms and shipwrecks in an atmosphere like this?”
The sun was setting in a gorgeous bank of cloud that presaged weather fine and settled for days to come. Its last rays glowed on a vast expanse of ocean, calm and brilliantly blue. Sky and sea were alike at peace and beautiful.
“Yes, storms and shipwrecks seem idle dreams,” murmured Nina, again.
There was only one restless thing in the whole extent of the wide horizon,—the huge steamer cutting her way swiftly through the deep blue waves, and seeming in the silence that brooded over the waste of waters to be a living, sentient thing. In the quiet of this exquisite summer evening, her movements appeared unseemly. Ah, no, they were not! She had a reason. Every throb of her iron heart seemed to say, “Make haste, make haste, a day will come when the tiny, guileless waves lapping your sides will be transformed into raging, furious fiends, dashing themselves against your iron plates as if to wrest your living victims from you.”
Nina shuddered, and, extending her body seawards, looked down at the track of frothy white foam trailing out behind her; and at this moment when her thoughts were far away, when her eyes were trying to pierce the depths of the beautiful fickle element below, some one came softly behind her, and uttered the prosaic words, “Dinner is served, ma’am.”
“Thank you, I don’t care for any,” she observed, with a start; and the too attentive Merdyce crept disappointedly away.
Nina tried to resume her interrupted soliloquy, but the charm was broken. She cast a regretful glance at the sparkling sea, the rosy sky; then, turning, looked down a near skylight into the dining-saloon. Everybody was at dinner. The stewards, like kindly birds of prey, hovered over the long tables, then departing, wheeled and circled about the corners of the room, in their efforts to obtain fresh supplies of food for their hungry charges.