CHAPTER II.


"His stock, a few French phrases, got by heart,
With much to learn, but nothing to impart;
The youth, obedient to his sire's commands,
Sets off a wanderer into foreign lands."

COWPER

It was now nearly dark, and the crowd, having satisfied its idle
curiosity, began slowly to disperse. The Signor Viti remained till the
last, conceiving it to be his duty to be on the alert in such troubled
times; but, with all his bustling activity, it escaped his vigilance and
means of observation to detect the circumstance that the stranger, while
he steered into the bay with so much confidence, had contrived to bring
up at a point where not a single gun from the batteries could be brought
to bear on him; while his own shot, had he been disposed to hostilities,
would have completely raked the little haven. But Vito Viti, though so
enthusiastic an admirer of the art, was no gunner himself, and little
liked to dwell on the effect of shot, except as it applied to others,
and not at all to himself.

Of all the suspicious, apprehensive, and curious, who had been collected
in and about the port, since it was known the lugger intended to come
into the bay, Ghita and 'Maso alone remained on watch, after the vessel
was anchored. A loud hail had been given by those intrusted with the
execution of the quarantine laws, the great physical bugbear and moral
mystification of the Mediterranean; and the questions put had been