strokes of my
heart.

To escape now seemed impossible. At least it seemed impossible while
they talked. A dark spot in the shining expanse of fog swam into view.
It shifted its place after I had first made it out, and then remained
motionless, astern of the dinghy. It was the shadow of a big boat full
of men, but when they were silent, I was not sure that I saw anything
at all. I made no doubt, had they been aware of our nearness, there were
amongst them eyes that could have detected us in the same elusive way.
But how could they even dream of anything of the kind? They talked
noisily, and there must have been a round dozen of them, at the least.

Sometimes they would fall a-shouting all together, and then keep quiet
as if listening. By-and-by I began to hear answering yells, that seemed
to converge upon us from all directions.

We were in the thick of it. It was Manuel's boat, as Castro had guessed,
and the other boats were rallying upon it gropingly, keeping up a
succession of yells:

"_Ohe! Ohe!_ Where, where?"

And the people in Manuel's boat howled back at them, "_Ohe! Ohe...e!_
This way; here!"

Suddenly he struck the guitar a mighty blow, and chanted in an inspired
and grandiose strain:

"Steer--for--the--song."

His fingers ran riot among the strings, and above the jingling his
voice, forced to the highest pitch, declaimed, as in the midst of a
tempest:

"I adore the saints in the glory of heaven
And, on the dust of the earth,
The print of her footsteps."

He was improvising. Sometimes he gasped; the rill of softened tinkle ran
on, and, glaring watchfully, I fancied I could detect his shape in the
white vapour, like a shadow thrown from afar by a tallow dip upon a
snowy sheet--the lank droop of his posturing, the greasy locks, the
attentive poise of his head, the sentimental rolling of his lustrous and
enormous eyes.

I had not forgotten his astonishing display in the cabin of the schooner
when, after the confiding of his woes and his ambitions, he had favoured
me with a sample of his art. As at that time, when he had been nursing
his truculent conceit, he sang, and the unsteady twanging of his guitar
lurched and staggered far behind his voice, like a drunken slave in the
footsteps of a raving master. Tinkle, tinkle, twang! A headlong rush of
muddled fingering; a sudden bang, like a heavy stumble.

"She is the proud daughter of the old Castile! _Ola! Ola!_" he chanted
mysterious