"You are mad, Bastiano; we have not been able ever since the morning to
get near Vico, and have been obliged to keep tacking about; your skill
and strength have been able to do nothing against this frightful
hurricane which has driven us back to this point."

"It is the first time you have ever refused to go with me," remarked the
young man.

"Well, yes, my dear Bastiano, I do not know how it is, but to-night I
feel drawn to the island by an irresistible power. The winds have been
unchained to bring me back to it in spite of myself, and I will own to
you, even though it should make me seem like a madman in your eyes, that
this simple and ordinary event appears to me like an order from heaven.
Do you see that lamp shining over there?"

"I know it," answered Bastiano, suppressing a sigh.

"It was lighted before the Virgin one the day when my sister was born,
and for eighteen year it has never ceased to burn, night and day. It was
my mother's vow. You do not know, my dear Bastiano, you cannot know how
many torturing thoughts that vow recalls to me. My poor mother called me
to her deathbed and told me a frightful tale, a horrible secret, which
weighs on my soul like a cloak of lead, and of which I can only relieve
myself by confiding it to a friend. When her painful story was ended she
asked to see and to embrace my sister, who was just born; then with her
trembling hand, already chilled by the approach of death, she desired to
light the lamp herself. 'Remember,' these were her last words,
'remember, Gabriel, that your sister is vowed to the Madonna. As long as
this light shines before the blessed image of the Virgin, your sister