man did not look up to Vere. He must have looked if his attention had
been drawn to the fact that she was there--a little spy upon the men
of the sea, considering them from her eminence.

Ruffo had not told. She was glad.

Presently the man moved from his place in the bows. She saw him lift a
leg to get over into the stern, treading carefully in order not to
trample on his sleeping companions. Then his black figure seemed to
shut up like a telescope. He had become one with the dimness in the
boat, was no longer detached from it. Only Ruffo was still detached.
Was he going to sleep, too?

A certain tenseness came into Vere's body. She kept her eyes, which
she had opened very wide, fixed upon the black figure. It remained
standing. The head moved. He was certainly looking up. She realized
that he was not sleepy, despite that yawn,--that he would like to
speak to her--to let her know that he knew she was there.

Perhaps he did not dare to--or, not that, perhaps fishermen's
etiquette, already enshrined in his nature, did not permit him to come
ashore. The boat was so close to the land that he could step on to it
easily.

She leaned down.

"Pescator!"

It was scarcely more than a whisper. But the night was so intensely
still that he heard it. Or, if not that, he felt it. His shadow--so it