“Afloat, of course, Captain Cuffe; such a thing would hardly come to pass ashore.”

“All that I understand; but you say the prisoner left his vessel in order to visit an aunt of the young woman’s; thence he went into the Bay for the sole purpose of finding the young woman herself.  Now, this is an important fact, as it concerns the prisoner’s motives and may affect his life.  The court must act with all the facts before it; as a commencement, tell us where Raoul Yvard left his lugger to go on yonder headland.”

“I do not think, Captain Cuffe, you’ve got the story exactly right.  Captain Rule didn’t go on the mountain, a’ter all, so much to see the aunt as to see the niece at the aunt’s dwelling; if one would eend right in a story, he must begin right.”

“I left le Feu-Follet, Monsieur le Capitaine,” Raoul calmly observed, “not two cables’ length from the very spot where your own ship is now lying; but it was at an hour of the night when the good people of Capri were asleep, and they knew nothing of our visit.  You see the lugger is no longer here.”

“And do you confirm this story under the solemnity of your oath?” demanded Cuffe of Ithuel, little imagining how easy it was to the witness to confirm anything he saw fit in the way he mentioned.

“Sartain; every word is true, gentlemen,” answered Ithuel.  “It was not more than a cable’s length from this very spot, according to my judgment.”

“And where is the lugger now?” asked Cuffe, betraying the drift of all his questions in his eagerness to learn more.

Ithuel was not to be led on so hurriedly or so blindly.  Affecting a girlish sort of coyness, he answered, simpering: 

“Why, Captain Cuffe, I cannot think of answering a question like that under the solemnity of an oath, as you call it.  No one can know where the little Folly is but them that’s in her.”

Cuffe was a little disconcerted at the answer, while Lyon smiled ironically; the latter then took upon himself the office of cross-examining, with an opinion of his own penetration and shrewdness that at least ought to have made him quite equal to encountering one of Ithuel’s readiness in subterfuges.

“We do not expect you to tell us of your own knowledge, witness,” he said, “precisely the position by latitude and longitude, or by the points of the compass, at this identical instant, of the craft called by some the le Few-Folly, by others the Few-Follay, and, as it would now seem, by yourself, the Little Folly; for that, as ye’ve well obsairved, can be known only to those who are actually on board her; but ye’ll be remembering, perhaps, the place it was agreed on between you, where ye were to find the lugger at your return from this hazardous expedition that ye’ve been making amang ye, into the Bay of Naples?”

“I object to that question as contrary to law,” put in Ithuel, with a spirit and promptitude that caused the Judge Advocate to start, and the members of the court to look at each other in surprise.