Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/291

Rh remained constantly in the cabin, where everything was rolling and crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of cries and curses, and he thought that his last hour had come. There were other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of insupportable heat, of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched hours, during which the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the planks, seemed all dead. And the voyage was endless; sea and sky, sky and sea; to-day the same as yesterday, to-morrow like to-day, and so on, always, eternally.

And for long hours he stood leaning on the bulwarks, gazing at that boundless sea in wonder, thinking vaguely of his mother until his eyes closed and his head was drooping with sleep; and then again he beheld that unknown face which gazed upon him with an air of sympathy, and repeated in his ear, “Your mother is dead!” and at the sound of that voice he awoke with a start, to resume his dreaming with wide-open eyes, and to gaze at the unchanging horizon.

The voyage lasted twenty-seven days. But the last days were the best. The weather was fine, and the air cool. He had made the acquaintance of a good old man, a Lombard, who was going to America to find his son, an agriculturist in the vicinity of the town of Rosario; he had told him his whole story, and the old man kept repeating every little while, as he tapped him on the nape of the neck with his hand, “Courage, my lad; you will find your mother well and happy.”

This companionship comforted him; his sad presentiments were turned into joyous ones. Seated on the bow, beside the aged peasant, who was smoking