It was a beautiful morning. The light falling from the sky and reflected from the water made radiant the surface of the lake, and bathed everything in an atmosphere of clearness saturated with color, such as some marines suggest. Everybody, even the mamas, laughed and grew merry. "Do you remember, when we were girls--" they began to each other; and Maria and her young companions exchanged smiling glances.
One man alone remained a stranger to this gayety--it was the helmsman. Young, of athletic build, his melancholy eyes and the severe lines of his lips gave an interest to his face, and this was heightened by his long black hair falling naturally about his muscular neck. His wrists of steel managed like a feather the large and heavy oar which served as rudder to guide the two barks.
Maria Clara had several times met his eyes, but he quickly turned them away to the shores or the mountains. Pitying his solitude, she offered him some cakes. With a certain surprise he took one, refusing the others, and thanked her in a voice scarcely audible. No one else seemed to think of him.
The early breakfast done, the party moved off toward the fishing enclosures. There were two, a little distance apart, both the property of Captain Tiago. In advance, a flock of white herons could be seen, some moving among the reeds, some flying here and there, skimming the water with their wings, and filling the air with their strident cries. Maria Clara followed them with her eyes, as, at the approach of the two barks, they flew away from the shore.
"Do these birds have their nests in the mountains?" she asked the helmsman, less perhaps from the wish to know than to make the silent fellow talk.
"Probably, señora," he replied, "but no one has ever yet seen them."
"I suppose they must have; if not, they are unhappy indeed."
Maria Clara did not catch the note of sadness in his voice.
"They say, señora, that the nests of these birds are invisible, and have the power to render invisible whoever holds them; that as the soul can be seen only in the mirror of the eyes, so these nests can be seen only in the mirror of the water."
Maria Clara became pensive. But they had come to the first baklad, as the enclosures are called. The old sailor in charge attached the boats to the reeds, while his son prepared to mount with lines and nets.