Vere called out: “Madre! Madre!”
She bent down.
“Madre! The light is burning.”
The sailors, too, bent down, right down to the water. They caught at it with their hands, Gaspare, too. Vere understood, and, kneeling on the gunwale, firmly in Gaspare’s grasp, she joined in their action.
She sprinkled the boat with the acqua benedetta and made the sign of the cross.
CHAPTER XIV
When, the next day, Artois sat down at his table to work he found it impossible to concentrate his mind. The irritation of the previous evening had passed away. He attributed it to the physical effect made upon him by the disturbed atmosphere. Now the sun shone, the sky was clear, the sea calm. He had just come out of an ice-cold bath, had taken his coffee, and smoked one cigarette. A quiet morning lay before him. Quiet?
He got up and went to the window.
On the wooden roof of the bath establishment opposite rows of towels, hung out to dry, were moving listlessly to and fro in the soft breeze. Capri was almost hidden by haze in the distance. In the sea, just below him, several heads of swimmers moved. One boy was “making death.” He floated on his back with his eyes closed and his arms extended. His body, giving itself without resistance to every movement of the water, looked corpselike and ghostly.