As soon as he caught sight of it, Trikaliss put his dagger back in his sash; if he had turned purple at what he saw ahead, now he was livid. He hastened to Timéa, who was looking through the glass at the peaks of Perigrada. "Give me the telescope!" he exclaimed in a hoarse voice.
"Oh, how pretty that is!" said Timéa, as she gave up the glass.
"What?"
"On the cliffs there are little marmots playing together like monkeys."
Euthemio directed the telescope toward the approaching vessel, and his brows contracted; his face was pale as death.
Timéa took the glass from his hand and looked again for the marmots on the rocks. Euthemio kept his arm round her waist.
"How they jump and dance and chase each other; how amusing!" and Timéa little knew how near she was to being lifted by the arm that held her, and plunged over the bulwarks into the foaming flood.
But what Euthemio saw on the other side brought back into his face the color it had lost.
When Timar arrived within a cast of the mill, he took a coil of the anchor-rope in his right hand; a hook was fastened to its end. The rudderless mass came quickly nearer, like some drifting antediluvian monster—blind chance guided it; its paddle-wheel turned swiftly with the motion of the water, and under the empty out-shoot the mill-stone revolved over the flour-bin as if it was working hard.
In this fabric devoted to certain destruction, there was no living thing except a white cat, which sat on the red-painted shingle roof and mewed piteously.