Frank and Durkin leaned over the rail together, as they drifted slowly up the bay, the most beautiful bay in all the world, with its twilight sounds of shipping, its rattle of anchor chains, its far-off cries and echoes, and its watery, pungent Southern odors.
They watched the ship's officer put ashore to obtain _pratique_, and the yellow flag come down, and heard the signal-bells of the engine-room, as the officer returned, with a great cigar in one corner of his bearded mouth.
There was nothing amiss.

There were neither Carabinieri nor Guardie di Pubblica Sicurezza to come on board with papers and cross-questions.
Before the break of day their discharged cargo would be in the lighters and they would be steaming southward for the Straits of Messina.
That night, on the deserted deck, at anchor between the city and the sea, they watched the glimmering lights of Naples, rising tier after tier from the _Immacolatella Nuova_ and its ship lamps to the _Palazzo di Capodimonte_ and its near-by _Osservatorio_.

And when the lights of the city thinned out and the crowning haze of gold melted from its hillsides, with the advancing night, Frank and Durkin sat back in their steamer-chairs and looked up at the stars, talking of Home, and of the future.
Yet the beauty of that balmy and tranquil night seemed to bring little peace of mind to Durkin.

There were reasons, of late, when moments of meditation were not always moments of contentment to him.

His wife had noticed that ever-increasing trouble of soul, and although she said nothing of it, she had watched him narrowly and not altogether despondently.