There was a constant arrival and departure of boats from the steps,
fifty yards to the right of the spot where the speakers were standing;
but where they had stationed themselves, about halfway between the
landing steps and the canal running down by the side of the ducal
palace, there were but few people about.

Francis Hammond was a lad between fifteen and sixteen years old. His
father was a merchant of London. He was a man of great enterprise and
energy, and had four years before determined to leave his junior
partner in charge of the business in London, and to come out himself
for a time to Venice, so as to buy the Eastern stuffs in which he dealt
at the headquarters of the trade, instead of paying such prices as the
agents of the Venetian traders might demand in London.

He had succeeded beyond his expectations. In Venice there were
constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the
spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of
some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the
towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged
when these goods arrived in London. It was true that occasionally some
of his cargoes were lost on the homeward voyage, captured either by the
Genoese or the Moorish pirates; but even allowing for this, the profits
of the trade were excellent.

The English merchant occupied a good position in Venice. The promptness
of his payments, and the integrity of his dealings, made him generally
respected; and the fact that he was engaged in trade was no drawback to
his social position, in a city in which, of all others, trade was
considered honourable, and where members of even the most aristocratic
families were, with scarcely an exception, engaged in commerce. There