This traveller was not much hampered with luggage.  When finally the train was driven into the glare of the station, and the usual roar and confusion began, he took his small bag in his hand and rapidly made his way through the crowd; then out and down the broad stone steps, and into a gondola.  In a couple of minutes he was completely away from all that glare and bustle and noise; nothing around him but darkness and an absolute silence.

The city seemed as the City of the Dead.  The tall and sombre buildings on each side of the water-highway were masses of black—­blackest of all where they showed against the stars.  The ear sought in vain for any sound of human life; there was nothing but the lapping of the water along the side of the boat, and the slow, monotonous plash of the oar.

Father and farther into the silence and the darkness; and now here and there a window, close down to the water, and heavily barred with rectangular bars of iron, shows a dull red light; but there is no sound, nor any passing shadow within.  The man who is standing by the hearse-like cabin of the gondola observes and thinks.  These black buildings; the narrow and secret canals; the stillness of the night:  are they not suggestive enough—­of revenge, a quick blow, and the silence of the grave?  And now, as the gondola still glides on, there is heard a slow and distant tolling of bells.  The Deed is done, then?—­no longer will the piteous hands be thrust out of the barred window—­no longer will the wild cry for help startle the passer-by in the night-time.  And now again, as the gondola goes on its way, another sound—­still more muffled and indistinct—­the sound of a church organ, with the solemn chanting of voices.  Are they praying for the soul of the dead?  The sound becomes more and more distant; the gondola goes on its way.

The new-comer has no further time for these idle fancies.  At the Rialto bridge he stops the gondola, pays the man, and goes ashore.  Then, rapidly ascending the steps, he crosses the bridge, descends the other side, and again jumps into a gondola.  All this the work of a few seconds.

But it was obvious he had been expected.  He gave no instructions to the two men in this second gondola.  They instantly went to work, and with a rapid and powerful stroke sent the boat along—­with an occasional warning cry as they swept by the entrance to one or other of the smaller canals.  Finally, they abruptly left the Grand Canal, close by the Corte d’Appello, and shot into a narrow opening that seemed little more than a slit between the buildings.

Here they had to go more cautiously; the orange light of their lamp shining as they passed on the empty archways, and on the iron-barred windows, and slimy steps.  And always this strange silence in the dead or sleeping city, and the monotonous plash of the oars, and the deep low cry of “Sia premi!” or “Sia stali!” to give warning of their approach.  But, indeed, that warning was unnecessary; they were absolutely alone in this labyrinth of gloomy water-ways.