He stopped again in his discourse; for suddenly the image grew dark. What was that? a cloud? rain? He looked around. In the west it had grown black and heavy from the horizon up. "West wind?" said Don Cesare. "Rain wind?--yes. But a favorable wind for ships that come from the ocean into the Mediterranean. San Pancrazio, San Pancrazio--only remember me!" He clambered slowly up the steep path, that led between rubble, sharp-pointed cactus and aloes, to the chapel, but on the way he often paused and looked around to see if any gleam of white sail flashed across the blackness of the waves; for now he knew certainly that Evolino had listened to him, and once the wind came to blowing, the ships could not long fail. Thicker and thicker the huge clouds massed themselves on the horizon. When he reached the top he sat down under an olive tree to take breath. In the distance he thought he heard a noise. Was it a ship in whose cordage the wind whistled its song, and which was hastening to the protecting harbor? "Then Carmela may wait till I come home," murmured Don Cesare. "I shall stay up here." And, his eye immovably fixed on the water, Don Cesare remained sitting under his olive tree.
Not from the sea, however, did the sound come which held the listening trader spellbound on his lookout. With her narrow mantle drawn far over her face, glancing on every side, secretly trembling from fear and joy, Carmela ran beside Nino along the shore, jumped, with a beating heart, from stone to stone, and at every noise that reached her ears from the sea or the dark lemon trees, she clung closer and faster to her companion.
"It is too far," she whispered, and already repented that she had listened to his persistent entreaties, and left the safe walls of her own home to follow him on this dangerous expedition.
"Calm yourself, child," answered Nino; "it is not a hundred steps further, and your brother will not return before midnight--to-day especially, they will have so much to tell about the fate of San Pancrazio--and meanwhile we will tell other stories yonder in my cozy Casina."
"Oh, Nino, it frightens me. Why did we not stay and chat at my window? The street is so lonesome. Let us turn back. Really it is not right for me."
"What are you saying, Carmela? The street lonesome? Oh, yes, and suppose that old Francisca, your servant, looks out of the window on a sudden, and sets all the dogs on the midnight marauder, as she did last time? In my Casina there is nothing of that kind to dread. We shall be alone there, and we have never been alone together yet since we plighted our love to one another."
Carmela stood still.
"Nino," she said, "you risk nothing; but I risk everything. If any one should find me here--or yonder."
"Who should find you?" broke in Nino. "No one wanders around out here at this hour, and you are as safe as"--
She started suddenly, shrank back, and laid her hand, with an impetuous gesture, on his mouth. They were standing directly in front of the Promontory, where its outermost point juts forth and descends sheer to the sea, and where the path crowds narrowly between this rocky wall and the water.