"Are you a sailor, too?"
"Signora, I can do anything."
"And will you be long away?"
"Who knows, signora? But I told Lucrezia to-day, and when she cried I
told her something else. We are 'promised.'"
"I am glad," Hermione said, holding out her hand to him.
He took it in an iron grip.
"Be very good to her when you're married, won't you?"
"Oh, she'll be all right with me," he answered, carelessly. "And I won't
give her the slap in the face on the wedding-day."
"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"
There was a shrill cry from the mountain and Maurice and Gaspare came
leaping down, scattering the stones, the revolvers still in their hands.
"Look, signora, look!" cried Gaspare, pulling a sheet of paper from his
pocket and holding it proudly up. "Do you see the holes? One, two,
three--"
He began to count.
"And I made five. Didn't I, signore?"
"You're a dead shot, Gasparino. Did you hear us, Hermione?"
"Yes," she said. "But you didn't hear me."
"You? Did you call?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Sebastiano's got a message for you," Hermione said.
She could not tell him now the absurd impulse that had made her call him.
"What's the message, Sebastiano?" asked Maurice, in his stumbling
Sicilian-Italian that was very imperfect, but that nevertheless had
already the true accent of the peasants about Marechiaro.
"Signore, there will be a moon to-night."
"Già. Lo so."
"Are you sleepy, signorino?"
He touched his eyes with his sinewy hands and made his face look drowsy.
Maurice laughed.
"No."
"Are you afraid of being naked in the sea at night? But you need not
enter it. Are you afraid of sleeping at dawn in a cave upon the sands?"
"What is it all?" asked Maurice. "Gaspare, I understand you best."
"I know," said Gaspare, joyously. "It's the fishing. Nito has sent. I
told him to. Is it Nito, Sebastiano?"
Sebastiano nodded. Gaspare turned eagerly to Maurice.
"Oh, signore, you must come, you will come!"
"Where? In a boat?"
"No. We go down to the shore, to Isola Bella. We take food, wine, red
wine, and a net. Between twenty-two and twenty-three o'clock is the time
to begin. And the sea must be calm. Is the sea calm to-day, Sebastiano?"