For when the fog had begun
to creep in-shore, hastening their departure, he only answered their
farewells by a silent pressure of the hand, mute lips, and far-off
eyes.
When the sound of their laboring oars grew fainter, he told Antonio to
lead him and Sanchicha again to the buried boat. There he bade her
kneel beside him. "We will do penance here, thou and I, daughter," he
said, gravely. When the fog had drawn its curtain gently around the
strange pair, and sea and shore were blotted out, he whispered, "Tell
me, it was even so, was it not, daughter, on the night she came?" When
the distant clatter of blocks and rattle of cordage came from the
unseen vessel, now standing out to sea, he whispered again, "So, this
is what thou didst hear, even then." And so during the night he marked,
more or less audibly to the half-conscious woman at his side, the low
whisper of the waves, the murmur of the far-off breakers, the
lightening and thickening of the fog, the phantoms of moving shapes,
and the slow coming of the dawn. And when the morning sun had rent the
veil over land and sea, Antonio and Jose found him, haggard but erect,
beside the trembling old woman, with a blessing on his lips, pointing
to the horizon where a single sail still glimmered:--
"_Va Usted con Dios_.
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