While he talked, Nina's head had been gradually sinking lower,
and her face almost touched his now. Her hair was over his eyes, her
breath was on his forehead, her arms were about his body. 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.
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