ange of sails
become necessary, that Antoine would not be there to admonish them of
the circumstance. One day was so much like another, too, in that
tranquil season of the year, and in that luxurious sea, that all on
board knew the regular mutations that the hours produced. The southerly
air in the morning, the zephyr in the afternoon, and the land wind at
night, were as much matters of course as the rising and setting of the
sun. No one felt apprehension, while all submitted to the influence of a
want of rest and of the drowsiness of the climate.

Not so with Antoine. His hairs were gray. Sleep was no longer so
necessary to him. He had much pride of calling, too; was long
experienced, and possessed senses sharpened and rendered critical by
practice and many dangers. Time and again did he turn his eyes toward
Campanella, to ascertain if any signs of the enemy were in sight; the
obscurity prevented anything from being visible but the dark outline of
the high and rock-bound coast. Then he glanced his eyes over the deck,
and felt how completely everything depended on his own vigilance and
faithfulness. The look at the sails and to windward brought no cause for
uneasiness, however; and, presuming on his isolation, he began to sing,
in suppressed tones, an air of the Troubadours; one that he had learned
in childhood, in his native _langue du midi_. Thus passed the minutes
until Antoine saw the first glimmerings of morning peeping out of the
darkness, that came above the mountain-tops that lay in the vicinity of
Eboli. Antoine felt solitary; he was not sorry to greet these symptoms
of a return to the animation and communion of a new day.

"Hist! _mon lieutenant!_" whispered the old mariner, unwilling to expose
the drowsiness of his young superior to the gaze of the common men;
"_mon lieutenant_--'tis I, Antoine."

"Eh!--_bah!--Oh, Antoine, est-ce-que toi? Bon_--what would you have,
_mon ami_?"

"I hear the surf, I think, _mon lieutenant._ Listen--is not that the
water striking on the rocks of the shore?"

"_Jamais!_ You see the land is a mile from us; this coast has no shoals.
The captain told us to stand close in, before we hove to or called him.
_Pardie!_--Antoine, how the little witch has travelled in my watch! Here
we are, within a musket's range from the heights, yet there has been
no wind."

"_Pardon, mon lieutenant_--I do not like that sound of the surf; it is
too near for the shore. Will you have the kindness t