United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Carmen started from sleep to find her heart throbbing so that the couch shook with it. Night was growing gray; the door had just been opened and slammed again. Through the rain-whipped panes she discerned the passing shape of Feliu, making for the beach a broad and bearded silhouette, bending against the wind.
In one instant Carmen's quick, deft hands had stripped the slender little body; and while Mateo and Feliu were finding dry clothing and stimulants, and Miguel telling how it all happened quickly, passionately, with furious gesture, the kind and vigorous woman exerted all her skill to revive the flickering life.
Then Carmen lifted her from the bed to her lap, and caressed her, and rocked her gently to and fro, as she had done many a night for Concha, murmuring, "Yo sere tu madre, angel mio, dulzura mia; sere tu madrecita, palomita mia!" Feliu re-appeared at the inner door: at a sign, he approached cautiously, without noise, and looked.
A moment more, and Feliu has lifted himself beside the waifs ... How fast the dead woman clings, as if with the one power which is strong as death, the desperate force of love! Not in vain; for the frail creature bound to the mother's corpse with a silken scarf has still the strength to cry out: "Maman! maman!"
In less than two months Feliu felt really proud at the progress made by his tiny pupil: it was a delight to watch her lifting her slender arms above the water in swift, easy curves, with the same fine grace that marked all her other natural motions. Later on he taught her not to fear the sea even when it growled a little, how to ride a swell, how to face a breaker, how to dive.
She is very weak yet, and in no condition to be taken to the city, right in the middle of the hot season; and nobody could care for her any better than she's being cared for here. Then, again, seems to me that as Feliu saved her life, and that at the risk of his own, he's got the prior claim, anyhow; and his wife is just crazy about the child wants to adopt her.
No!" said Feliu, shaking his head.... One of his luggermen, Gioachino Sparicio, who, though a Sicilian, could speak several Italian idioms besides his own, had already essayed. "She speaks something or other," answered the captain "but no English. I couldn't make her understand me; and Feliu, who talks nearly all the infernal languages spoken down this way, says he can't make her understand him.
But he woke before day with a feeling of intense prostration, a violent headache, and such an aversion for the mere idea of food that Feliu's invitation to breakfast at five o'clock gave him an internal qualm. Perhaps a touch of malaria. In any case he felt it would be both dangerous and useless to return to town unwell; and Feliu, observing his condition, himself advised against the journey.
And at last, even Viosca's Point, remote and unfamiliar as it was, had a stranger to shelter: a good old gentleman named Edwards, rather broken down in health who came as much for quiet as for sea-air, and who had been warmly recommended to Feliu by Captain Harris. For some years he had been troubled by a disease of the heart.
"Oh, Feliu! the sea is coming upon us!" she answered, in the same tongue. But she screamed out a word inspired by her fear: she did not cry, "Se nos viene el mar encima!" but "Se nos viene LA ALTURA!" the name that conveys the terrible thought of depth swallowed up in height, the height of the high sea.
Word Of The Day