ssion.
Venetia rushed forward and seized his arm, and gazed intently on his
face. He shrank from her glance; his frame trembled.

CHAPTER XII.

In the heart of the tempest Captain Cadurcis traced his way in a sea
of vapour with extreme danger and difficulty to the shore. On his
arrival at Spezzia, however, scarcely a house was visible, and the
only evidence of the situation of the place was the cessation of an
immense white surf which otherwise indicated the line of the sea, but
the absence of which proved his contiguity to a harbour. In the thick
fog he heard the cries and shouts of the returning fishermen, and
of their wives and children responding from the land to their
exclamations. He was forced, therefore, to wait at Spezzia, in an
agony of impotent suspense, until the fury of the storm was over and
the sky was partially cleared. At length the objects became gradually
less obscure; he could trace the outline of the houses, and catch a
glimpse of the water half a mile out, and soon the old castles which
guard the entrance of the strait that leads into the gulf, looming
in the distance, and now and then a group of human beings in the
vanishing vapour. Of these he made some inquiries, but in vain,
respecting the boat and his friends. He then made the brig, but could
learn nothing except their departure in the morning. He at length
obtained a horse and galloped along the coast towards Lerici, keeping
a sharp look out as he proceeded and stopping at every village in his
progress for intelligence. When he had arrived in the course of three
hours at Lerici, the storm had abated, the sky was clear, and no
evidence of the recent squall remained except the agitated state
of the waves. At Lerici he could hear nothing, so he hurried on to
Sarzana, where he learnt for the first time that an open boat,
with its sails set, had passed more than an hour before the squall
commenced. From Sarzana he hastened on to Lavenza, a little port, the
nearest sea-point to Massa, and where the Carrara marble is shipped
for England. Here also his inquiries were fruitless, and, exhausted
by his exertions, he dismounted and rested at the inn, not only for
repose, but to consider over the course which he should now pursue.
The boat had not been seen off Lavenza, and the idea that they had
made the coast towards Leghorn now occurred to him. His horse was so
wearied that he was obliged to stop some time at Lavenza, for he could
procure no