The young gentleman spoke in English; but the elder boatman, a man who had numbered many years, and who with his three sons was now still following the profession in which he had been bred in his early youth, seemed to remark the direction of his eyes, and to divine the subject of his thoughts and conversation. "Ah, sir," he said, "I should not wonder if there were an earthquake before night. You are staring at that queer-looking cloud; and I have rarely seen such a fellow as that, working away as if it were twisting itself into all sorts of shapes rather than begin the devastation, without its ending in something very sharp." The two young men, who comprehended every word, though spoken in the broad Mantuan dialect, looked at each other in silence; but Mr. Rhind, who, notwithstanding his long residence in Italy, had with difficulty mastered the common terms of the language, remained silent, merely observing, "Well, it is pleasant that the wind has gone down, although the river is still tossing about in a strange way; I am half-inclined to be sick as if I were at sea." Half an hour passed without the prognostication of the fisherman being fulfilled. The same lull in the air, the same agitation of the water continued; Occhiobello was in sight, and the sun was sinking far away over the Piedmontese hills, surrounded by a leaden purple colour, in which it was difficult to say whether the dull stormy gray or the crimson glow of evening predominated. In the south, the same heavy clouds were seen, somewhat higher than when the wind fell, cutting hard upon the blue sky overhead; and the large mass of vapour, the peculiar appearance of which I have already mentioned, lay contorting itself into a thousand different forms every moment. On the right bank, not far behind them, when they looked back, the travellers could see their horses and servants coming at an easy pace down the course of the stream, the slow progress of the boat having given an advantage to the party on land; and in front, a little more than half way between them and Occhiobello, a row boat was perceived crossing the broad river from the left bank to the right, apparently with great difficulty, and heavily laden. "That is Mantini's boat," said one of the boatmen to the other. "Ay, he'll get himself into a scrape some day," said the old man. "You see he's got horses in it now!" "How is that likely to get him into a scrape?" asked Lord Gowrie. "Is the boat not fitted for horses?" "Oh yes, signor," replied the man; "but it is not that I spoke of. The law says, no boat shall carry horses, oxen, or asses, except the regular ferry boats." "Few would get across, then, by any other conveyance," said Sir John Hume; "for this infernal tossing is beginning to make me think that none but asses, would go in a small boat when they could get a big one. Come, row on, row on, my men; for if you lose time grinning at my joke, I shall not take it as a compliment."