e cabin roof as if in encouragement. Her heart was with the
launch, as the seaman's is with his boat when it resists, surely for his
sake consciously, the assault of the great sea.

"Coraggio!"

She was murmuring the word. Gaspare looked at her. And the word was in
his eyes as it should be in all eyes that look at youth. And the launch
strove on.

"Coraggio! Coraggio!"

The spray was in her face. Her hair was wet with the rain. Her French
frock--that was probably ruined! But she knew that she had never felt
more happy. And now--it was like a miracle! Suddenly out of the darkness
a second darkness shaped itself, a darkness that she knew--the island.
And almost simultaneously there shone out a little steady light.

"Ecco il Santo!"

"Ecco! Ecco!"

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.

A companion shouted to him. He threw up his arms suddenly and shouted a
reply in the broadest Neapolitan, then began to swim vigorously towards
the slimy rocks at the base of Castel dell' Ovo. Upon the wooden terrace
of the baths among green plants in pots stood three women, probably
friends of the proprietor. For though it was already hot, the regular
bathing season of Naples had