Maria,ñaltaMartayMarí still shivering though she was wrapped up in her shawl, went to one of the windows which looked down into the garden whose earthwall was contiguous to the quay. From that window the whole length of the Nieva River could be seen down to El Moral, which was the place where it emptied into the sea. It would not measure more than a league in length, but its breadth varied wonderfully, according as it was seen at high or low water, at spring tide or neap tide. When there were full tides, it spread out half a league, lapping up against the foot of the pine-covered hills which shut in the valley on both sides. At low tide the water drew out almost completely, leaving barely a narrow, sinuous thread in the centre. Between the conterminous line of hills there lay on both sides of the channel wide flats of soft gray mud, dotted with pools of water where the ragamuffins of the quay took delight in splashing and wallowing until they had besmeared themselves thickly enough to go straight and wash it off by diving head first into the channel. Above the garden wall rose the masts of a few vessels, not a dozen in all, anchored by the quay, the majority of them smacks and schooners[5] of insignificant draught.
The young girl looked for an instant at the sky, which was still profoundly dark towards the west, hiding and confusing the outline of the distant mountains. In the zenith she noticed that it was completely overcast, of an ashen color, which grew lighter as she turned her face toward the east. There the clouds were not as yet compacted into a solid mass as in the opposite quarter; they stood out against the sweep of the sky in monstrous black piles, and opened sufficiently to let the few feeble, melancholy, ruddy rays pass through, which the sun, like a dying fire, was beginning to shed upon the earth. The tide was rising. The surface of the river absorbed the slender light of the sky, and gave forth nothing more than a tremulous metallic reflection in the far distance.
After watching the sunrise for a time, our maiden got a book which lay on the dressing-table in her room, and came back to the window to see if she could read; but it was not yet light enough. She laid the book on a chair and again went to the window, leaning her forehead against its panes. The sky kept growing brighter in the direction of El Moral; but it added no life or good cheer to the earth. The growing light seemed only to make more distinct its stern, forbidding face. A wretched and disagreeable day was in prospect, such as the natives of Nieva were accustomed to enjoy the larger part of the year.