Could they have reached Leghorn? It seemed
impossible. There was no hope they could now be at Sarzana, or Lerici.
When he contemplated the full contingency of what might have occurred,
his mind wandered, and refused to comprehend the possibility of the
terrible conclusion. He thought the morning would never break.
There was a cavernous rock by the seashore, that jutted into the water
like a small craggy promontory. Captain Cadurcis climbed to its top,
and then descending, reclined himself upon an inferior portion of it,
which formed a natural couch with the wave on each side. There, lying
at his length, he gazed upon the moon and stars whose brightness he
thought would never dim. The Mediterranean is a tideless sea, but the
swell of the waves, which still set in to the shore, bore occasionally
masses of sea-weed and other marine formations, and deposited them
around him, plashing, as it broke against the shore, with a melancholy
and monotonous sound. The abstraction of the scene, the hour, and the
surrounding circumstances brought, however, no refreshment to the
exhausted spirit of George Cadurcis. He could not think, indeed he did
not dare to think; but the villa of the Apennines and the open boat in
the squall flitted continually before him.
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