“I tell you what the captain said.  ‘There are two men,’ said he, ’and they are like gentlemen by their dress.’  ‘They shoot quail,’ said I, knowing the shore.  ‘They have no guns,’ said he.  Then he cried out, keeping his glasses to his eyes and steadying himself by the weather vang.  ‘God be blessed,’ he cried—­for he never said an evil word, that captain,—­’one of those gentlemen has struck the other on the back of the head and killed him!  And now he drags his body away towards the bushes.’  And he saw nothing more, but he showed me the place, where there is a gap in the high bank.  Afterwards he said he thought he had seen a woman too, and that it must have been an affair of jealousy.”

Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence for a moment.

“Did you hear of no murder at that time?” asked the sailor, taking up the earthen jar full of water.

“We heard nothing,” said Ercole promptly.

“Nothing,” echoed Padre Francesco.  “The captain was dreaming.  He saw trees moving in the wind.”

“Don Antonino had good eyes,” answered the sailor incredulously.

“What was the name of your vessel?” asked Padre Francesco.

“The Papa” replied the sailor without a smile.  “She was called Papa.”

Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack it.  The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart imitated by a ventriloquist.  But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows, for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain on a square-rigger.

“I went to sea for thirty years,” he said, “but I never heard of a vessel called the Papa.  You have said a silly thing.  I have given you water to drink, and filled your jar.  It is not courtesy to jest at men older than you.”

“Excuse me,” answered the man politely.  “May it never be that I should jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be; and, moreover, you have filled the jar with your own hands.  The brigantine was called as I say.  And if you wish to know why, I will tell you.  She was built by two rich brothers of Torre Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa when he was old and no longer went to sea.  Therefore, to honour him, they called the vessel the Papa.  This is the truth.”

Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers of this tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I knew the Papa well, that “she” was built and christened as the sailor said, and that her name still stood on the register of Italian shipping a few years ago.  She was not a brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a hurricane.

“We have learned something to-day,” observed Ercole, when the man had finished speaking.