“That you have,” he answered; “a hundred times at least; and right in the teeth of my advice.”

“Was not my sole object, in coming into the Bay yesterday, to find Ghita, and Ghita only?”

“Just so.  Of that, gentlemen, there can be no more question than there is about Vesuvius standing up at the head of the Bay, smoking like a brick-kiln.  That was Captain Rule’s sole a’r’n’d.”

“I just understood ye to say, witness,” put in Lyon, “and that only a bit since, that ye did not know the prisoner’s motive in coming into the Bay of Naples.  Ye called his behavior unaccountable.”

“Very true, sir, and so it is to me.  I know’d all along that love was at the bottom of it; but I don’t call love a motive, while I do call it unaccountable.  Love’s a feelin’ and not a nature.  That’s the explanation on’t.  Yes, I know’d it was love for Miss Gyty, but then that’s not a motive in law.”

“Answer to the facts.  The court will judge of the motive for itself.  How do you know that love for the young woman you mention was Raoul Yvard’s only object in coming into the Bay?”

“One finds out such things by keeping company with a man.  Captain Rule went first to look for the young woman up on the mountain yonder, where her aunt lives, and I went with him to talk English if it got to be necessary; and not finding Gyty at home, we got a boat and followed her over to Naples.  Thus, you see, sir, that I have reason to know what craft he was in chase of the whole time.”

As all this was strictly true, Ithuel related it naturally and in a way to gain some credit.

“You say you accompanied Raoul Yvard, witness, in a visit to the aunt of the young woman called Ghita Caraccioli,” observed Cuffe, in a careless way that was intended to entrap Ithuel into an unwary answer—­“where did you go from when you set out on your journey?”

“That would depend on the place one kept his reckoning from and the time of starting.  Now, I might say I started from Ameriky, which part of the world I left some years since; or I might say from Nantes, the port in which we fitted for sea.  As for Captain Rule, he would probably say Nantes.”

“In what manner did you come from Nantes?” continued Cuffe, without betraying resentment at an answer that might be deemed impertinent; or surprise, as if he found it difficult to comprehend.  “You did not make the journey on horseback, I should think?”

“Oh, I begin to understand you, Captain Cuffe.  Why, if the truth must be said, we came in the lugger the Few-Folly.”

“I supposed as much.  And when you went to visit this aunt where did you leave the lugger?”

“We didn’t leave her at all, sir; being under her canvas, our feet were no sooner in the boat and the line cast off than she left us as if we had been stuck up like a tree on dry ground.”

“Where did this happen?”