No two beings could be closer to each other, yet she guessed rather than understood the meaning of his last words that came out after a slight hesitation in a faint murmur, dying out imperceptibly into a profound and significant silence: "The sea, O Nina, is like a woman's heart." She closed his lips with a sudden kiss, and answered in a steady voice-- "But to the men that have no fear, O master of my life, the sea is ever true." Over their heads a film of dark, thread-like clouds, looking like immense cobwebs drifting under the stars, darkened the sky with the presage of the coming thunderstorm.

From the invisible hills the first distant rumble of thunder came in a prolonged roll which, after tossing about from hill to hill, lost itself in the forests of the Pantai.

Dain and Nina stood up, and the former looked at the sky uneasily.
"It is time for Babalatchi to be here," he said.

"The night is more than half gone.

Our road is long, and a bullet travels quicker than the best canoe." "He will be here before the moon is hidden behind the clouds," said Nina.
"I heard a splash in the water," she added.