--"He sing-a nicee,--mucha bueno!" murmured the fisherman. And then, suddenly,--with a rich and splendid basso that seemed to thrill every fibre of the planking,--Sparicio joined in the song:--"M'ama pur d'amore eterno, Ne deilitto sembri a te;
T'assicuro che l'inferno Una favola sol e." ...
All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, the fishers had ceased to be;--lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a king! How perfectly their voices married together!--they sang with passion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them. Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft gloom, ever slightly swerved by the steady blowing of the southeast wind in her sail;--always wearing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray about her prow,--always accompanied by the same smooth-backed swells,--always spinning out behind her the same long trail of interwoven foam. And Julien looked up. Ever the night thrilled more and more with silent twinklings;--more and more multitudinously lights pointed in the eternities;--the Evening Star quivered like a great drop of liquid white fire ready to fall;--Vega flamed as a pharos lighting the courses ethereal,--to guide the sailing of the suns, and the swarming of fleets of worlds. Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered into his blood,--filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness, which the sense of the Infinite brings,--when one feels the poetry of the Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten at once with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness of Man,--of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divine blue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silences never descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! if one could only sail on thus always, always through such a night--through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio and Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, always the same song!
"Scuza, Doct-a!--look-a out!" Julien bent down, as the big boom, loosened, swung over his head. The San Marco was rounding into shore,--heading for her home. Sparicio lifted a huge conch-shell from the deck, put it to his lips, filled his deep lungs, and flung out into the night--thrice--a profound, mellifluent, booming horn-tone. A minute passed. Then, ghostly faint, as an echo from very far away, a triple blowing responded ...
And a long purple mass loomed and swelled into sight, heightened, approached--land and trees black-shadowing, and lights that swung ... The San Marco glided into a bayou,--under a high wharfing of timbers, where a bearded fisherman waited, and a woman. Sparicio flung up a rope.
The bearded man caught it by the lantern-light, and tethered the San Marco to her p]ace. Then he asked, in a deep voice:
-"Has traido al Doctor?"
-"Si, si!" answered Sparicio... "Y el viejo?"
-"Aye! pobre!" responded Feliu,--"hace tres dias que esta muerto. "
Henry Edwards was dead!
He had died very suddenly, without a cry or a word, while resting in his rocking-chair,--the very day after Sparicio had sailed.
They had made him a grave in the marsh,--among the high weeds, not far from the ruined tomb of the Spanish fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earned his hundred dollars.
