first time that an open boat, with its sails set, had passed more than an hour before the squall commenced.  From Sarzana he hastened on to Lavenza, a little port, the nearest sea-point to Massa, and where the Carrara marble is shipped for England.  Here also his inquiries were fruitless, and, exhausted by his exertions, he dismounted and rested at the inn, not only for repose, but to consider over the course which he should now pursue.  The boat had not been seen off Lavenza, and the idea that they had made the coast towards Leghorn now occurred to him.  His horse was so wearied that he was obliged to stop some time at Lavenza, for he could procure no other mode of conveyance; the night also was fast coming on, and to proceed to Leghorn by this dangerous route at this hour was impossible.  At Lavenza therefore he remained, resolved to hasten to Leghorn at break of day.  This was a most awful night.  Although physically exhausted, Captain Cadurcis could not sleep, and, after some vain efforts, he quitted his restless bed on which he had laid down without undressing, and walked forth to the harbour.  Between anxiety for Herbert and his cousin, and for the unhappy women whom he had left behind, he was nearly distracted.  He gazed on the sea, as if some sail in sight might give him a chance of hope.  His professional experience assured him of all the danger of the squall.  He could not conceive how an open boat could live in such a sea, and an instant return to port so soon as the squall commenced, appeared the only chance of its salvation.  Could they have reached Leghorn?  It seemed impossible.  There was no hope they could now be at Sarzana, or Lerici.  When he contemplated the full contingency of what might have occurred, his mind wandered, and refused to comprehend the possibility of the terrible conclusion.  He thought the morning would never break.

There was a cavernous rock by the seashore, that jutted into the water like a small craggy promontory.  Captain Cadurcis climbed to its top, and then descending, reclined himself upon an inferior portion of it, which formed a natural couch with the wave on each side.  There, lying at his length, he gazed upon the moon and stars whose brightness he thought would never dim.  The Mediterranean is a tideless sea, but the swell of the waves, which still set in to the shore, bore occasionally masses of sea-weed and other marine formations, and deposited them around him, plashing, as it broke against the shore, with a melancholy and monotonous sound.  The abstraction of the scene, the hour, and the surrounding circumstances brought, however, no refreshment to the exhausted spirit of George Cadurcis.  He could not think, indeed he did not dare to think; but the villa of the Apennines and the open boat in the squall flitted continually before him.  His mind was feeble though excited, and he fell into a restless and yet unmeaning reverie.  As long as he had been in action, as long as he had been hurrying along the coast, the excitement of motion, the constant exercise of his senses, had relieved or distracted the intolerable suspense.  But this pause, this inevitable pause, overwhelmed him.  It oppressed his spirit like eternity.  And yet what might the morning bring?  He almost wished that he might remain for ever on this rock watching the moon and stars, and that the life of the world might never recommence.