The Call of the Blood - Page 71/317

"Si! si!" cried Giulio, beginning to tug at his waistcoat buttons.

"Once more, Gaspare!" said Maurice. "Only once!"

"But if you take cold, signorino, the signora--"

"I sha'n't catch cold. Only once!"

He broke away, laughing, from Gaspare, and was swiftly in the sea. The

Sicilians looked at him with admiration.

"E' veramente più Siciliano di noi!" exclaimed Nito.

The others murmured their assent. Gaspare glowed with pride in his pupil.

"I shall make the signore one of us," he said, as he deftly let out the

coils of the net.

"But how long is he going to stay?" asked Nito. "Will he not soon be

going back to his own country?"

For a moment Gaspare's countenance fell.

"When the heat comes," he began, doubtfully. Then he cheered up.

"Perhaps he will take me with him to England," he said.

This time Maurice waded with the net into the shadow of the rocks out of

the light of the moon. The night was waning, and a slight chill began to

creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling

its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the

darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received

a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have

become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of

the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. Upon the

shore he saw the forms of his companions, but they looked remote and

phantom-like. He did not hear their voices. Perhaps the slow approach of

dawn was beginning to affect them, and the little wind that was springing

up chilled their merriment and struck them to silence. Before him the

dense blackness of the rocks rose like a grotesque wall carved in

diabolic shapes, and as he stared at these shapes he had an odd fancy

that they were living things, and that they were watching him at his

labor. He could not get this idea, that he was being watched, out of his

head, and for a moment he forgot about the fish, and stood still, staring

at the monsters, whose bulky forms reared themselves up into the

moonlight from which they banished him.

"Signore! Signorino!"

There came to him a cry of protest from the shore. He started, moved

forward with the net, and went under water. He had stepped into a deep

hole. Still holding fast to the net, he came up to the surface, shook his

head, and struck out. As he did so he heard another cry, sharp yet

musical. But this cry did not come from the beach where his companions

were gathered. It rose from the blackness of the rocks close to him, and

it sounded like the cry of a woman. He winked his eyes to get the water

out of them, and swam for the rocks, heedless of his duty as a fisherman.

But the net impeded him, and again there was a shout from the shore: "Signorino! Signorino! E' pazzo Lei?"