"Always a pleasant smile on his face when you speak to him," said one of the ladies to a friend one day; "but I think he has a rather sad look sometimes, when he is pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets."
"Yes," said the other, with a sentimental air, "I wonder what he is thinking of at those times! I'll make love to the captain, and see if I can find out something about him, they seem very intimate. We must try and cheer him up, dear."
"He doesn't seem to want much cheering up now," said her friend, as Cardo passed them with two other young men, who were enjoying a story told by one of them, Cardo's merry laugh being loudest and heartiest of the three. But--there was a sober, wistful look on his face sometimes which was not habitual to it, and as the days slipped on, he might often be seen, leaning over the side of the vessel with an anxious pucker on his forehead.
The parting with Valmai had, of course, been a trying ordeal. With the fervour of a first and passionate love, he recalled every word she had spoken, every passing shade of thought reflected on her face, and while these reveries occupied his mind, there was a tender look in the deep black eyes and a smile on his lips. But these pleasant memories were apparently often followed by more perplexing thoughts. One afternoon he had been standing for some time lost in a dream, while he looked with eyes that saw nothing over the heaving waters to the distant horizon, when the captain's voice at his elbow recalled him to his surroundings.
"You are looking at the very point of the wind, the very eye of the storm."
"The storm!" said Cardo, starting; "are we going to have one?"
The captain looked critically in the direction towards which they were sailing.
"Yes, I see," said Cardo; "I had not noticed it before, though. How inky black the sky is over there! And the sea as black, and that white streak on the line of the horizon!"
"We shall have a bit of a toss," said the captain. "Couldn't expect to get to Australia on a mill pond."
"Mill pond do you call the swells we have had the last few days?"
"Almost," replied the captain, leaving him unceremoniously, and shouting some orders to his crew.
Thus left, Cardo fell again into a deep reverie. Yes, it looked black before them! "But I have always wished to see a storm at sea, and if I only had Valmai with me, I should be joyous and exultant; but instead of that, I am alone, and have a strange foreboding of some evil to come. I can't be well, though I'm sure I don't know where I ail, for I feel alright, and I eat like a horse."