ce of the ocean, in such a sort that the vast plains of salt
water looked perhaps more full of light than the fields of sky.

The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.

A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to
a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not
tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human
voice broke the divine spell.

The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed
to fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This
was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and
struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a
wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to
bring the good news to his family, he had followed the example set by
some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish
vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil
forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most delicious
pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of land he seemed
to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by the fireside; they
were crowding about him; he felt their caresses. Moina had grown to be
a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and striking. The fancied
picture had grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to