Raoul muttered a “sacr-r-re,” between his teeth, but he succeeded in suppressing all outward expression of feeling.  Cuffe, on the contrary, saw no other motive for unusual discretion, beyond the presence of his boat’s crew, before whom, however, he was accustomed to less reserve than with his people in general.

“If she be the same as the one we had in the cabin,” he answered, “there is no necessity for a veil; for a prettier or a more modest-looking girl is not often fallen in with.  What she wanted exactly is more than I can tell you, as she spoke Italian altogether; and ‘miladi’ had the interview pretty much to herself.  But her good looks seem to have taken with this old bachelor, the justice of the peace, who eyes her as if he had an inclination to open his mind to the beauty.  Ask him in Italian, Griffin, what mare’s nest he has run foul of now.”

“You seem to have found something to look at besides the Minerva, Signor Podesta,” observed Griffin, in an undertone.  “I hope it is not Venus.”

“Cospetto!” grunted Vito Viti, nudging his neighbor, the vice-governatore, and nodding toward the other boat; “if that be not little Ghita, who came into our island like a comet and went out of it—­to what shall I liken her sudden and extraordinary disappearance, Signor Andrea?—­”

“To that of le Feu-Follet, or ze Ving-y-Ving,” put in Griffin, who, now he had got the two functionaries fairly afloat, spared none of the jokes that come so easy and natural to a man-of-war’s man. “She went out, too, in an ‘extraordinary disappearance,’ and perhaps the lady and the lugger went out together.”

Vito Viti muttered an answer; for by this time he had discovered that he was a very different personage on board the Proserpine from what the other had appeared to consider him while in his native island.  He might have expressed himself aloud, indeed; but at that instant a column of smoke glanced out of the bow port of the Minerva—­a yellow flag was shown aloft—­and then came the report of the signal gun.

It has been said that vessels of war of four different nations were at that time lying in the Bay of Naples.  Nelson had come in but a short time previously, with seventeen ships of the line; and he found several more of his countrymen lying there.  This large force had been assembled to repel an expected attack on the island of Minorca; and it was still kept together in an uncertainty of the future movements of the enemy.  A Russian force had come out of the Black Sea, to act against the French, bringing with it a squadron of the Grand Signor; thus presenting to the world the singular spectacle of the followers of Luther, devotees of the Greek church, and disciples of Mahomet, uniting in defence of “our rights, our firesides, and our altars!” To these vessels must be added a small squadron of ships of the country; making a mixed force of four different ensigns that was to witness the melancholy scene we are about to relate.