How delightful it was to rally from that momentary gush of emotion, and feel so happy! To think so well of the world as to believe that all goes for the best in it, is a pleasant frame of mind to begin one's day with; to feel that though we have suffered anxiety, and all the tortures of deferred hope, it was good for us to know that everything was happening better for us than we could have planned it for ourselves, and that positively it was not so much by events we had been persecuted as by our own impatient reading of them. Something of all these sensations passed through Lucy's mind as she hurried here and there to prepare for her guests, stopping at intervals to look out towards the sea, and wonder how little way the felucca made, and how persistently she seemed to cling to the selfsame spot. Nor was she altogether unjust in this. The breeze had died away at sunrise; and in the interval before the land-wind should spring up there was almost a dead calm. “Is she moving at all?” cried Lucy, to one of the sailors who lounged on the rocks beneath the window. The man thought not. They had kept their course too far from shore, and were becalmed in consequence. How could they have done so?--surely sailors ought to have known better! and Tom, who was always boasting how he knew every current, and every eddy of wind, what was he about? It was a rude shock to that sweet optimism of a few moments back to have to own that here at least was something that might have been better. “And what ought they to do, what can they do?” asked she, impatiently, of the sailor. “Wait till towards noon, when the land-breeze freshens up, and beat.” “Beat means, go back and forward, scarcely gaining a mile an hour?” The sailor smiled, and owned she was not far wrong. “Which means that they may pass the day there,” cried she, fretfully. “They're not going to do it, anyhow,” said the man; “they are lowering a boat, and going to row ashore.” “Oh, how much better! and how long will it take them?” “Two hours, if they 're good rowers; three, or even four, if they 're not.” “Come in and have a glass of wine,” said she; “and you shall look through the telescope, and tell me how they row, and who are in the boat,--I mean how many are in it.” “What a fine glass! I can see them as if they were only a cable's length off. There's the Signorino Maso, your brother, at the bow oar; and then there's a sailor, and another sailor; and there's a signore, a large man,--_per Bacco_, he's the size of three,--at the stroke; and an old man, with white hair, and a cap with gold lace round it, steering; he has bright buttons down his coat.” “Never mind _him_. What of the large man,--is he young?” “He pulls like a young fellow! There now, he has thrown off his coat, and is going at it in earnest! Ah, he's no signore after all.” “How no signore?” asked she, hastily. “None but a sailor could row as he does! A man must be bred to it to handle an oar in that fashion.”