The magic of the night fell on the souls of the nuns; they ceased prattling; but when Sister Martha, the nightingale of the sisterhood, began to sing a hymn the others followed her example.  The sailors’ songs were hushed, and the psalms of the virgin sisters, imploring the protection of the Almighty, seemed to float round the gliding boat as softly as the light of the circling moon.  For hours—­and with increased zeal as the comet rose in the sky—­they gave themselves up to the soothing and encouraging pleasure of singing; but one by one the voices died away and their peaceful hymn was borne down the river to the sea, by degrees more low, more weary, more dreamlike.

They sat looking in their laps, gazing in rapture up to heaven, or at the dazzling ripples and the lotos flowers on the surface.  No one thought of the shore, not even the men, who had been lulled to sleep or daydreams by the nuns’ singing.  The pilot’s eyes were riveted on the channel—­and yet, as morning drew near, from time to time there was a twinkle, a flash behind the reed-beds on the eastern bank, and now and then there was a rustling and clatter there.  Was it a jackal that had plunged into the dense growth to surprise a brood of water-fowl; was it a hyena trampling through the thicket?

The flashing, the rustling, the dull footfall on parched earth followed the barge all through the night like a sinister, lurid, and muttering shadow.

Suddenly the captain started and gazed eastwards.—­What was that?

There was a herd of cattle feeding in a field beyond the reeds-two bulls perhaps were sharpening their horns.  The river was so low, and the banks rose so high, that it was impossible to see over them.  But at this moment a shrill voice spoke his name, and then the hunchback whispered in his ear: 

“There—­over there—­it is glittering again.—­I will bite off my own nose if that is not—­there, again.  Merciful God!  I am not mistaken.  Harness—­and there, that is the neighing of a horse; I know the sound.  The east is growing grey.  By all the saints, we are pursued!”

The captain looked eastwards with every sense alert, and after a few minutes silence he said decidedly “Yes.”

“Like a flight of quail for whom the fowler spreads his net,” sighed the gardener; but the boatman impatiently signed to him to be quiet, and gazed cautiously on every side.  Then he desired Gibbus to wake Rufinus and the shipwrights, and to hide all the nuns in the cabin.

“They will be packed as close as the dates sent to Rome in boxes,” muttered the gardener, as he went to call Rufinus.  “Poor souls, their saints may save them from suffocation; and as for me, on my faith, if it were not that Dame Joanna was the very best creature on two legs, and if I had not promised her to stick to the master, I would jump into the water and try the hospitality of the flamingoes and storks in the reeds!  We must learn to condescend!”