een-sighted. The presence of Carlo Giuntotardi and Ghita
had at first struck him as a little out of the common way; and though
he could not distinguish their faces by the light of the moon and at the
distance at which they were placed in the yawl, he fancied from the
first that his old acquaintances were in the boat the ship was towing.
Now Andrea Barrofaldi certainly had never before that day connected
Ghita or her uncle in any manner with Raoul Yvard; but it was beyond
dispute that the mysterious manner in which they disappeared from the
island had excited some remarks; and in his present state of mind it was
not an extraordinary circumstance that he had some distant and vague
glimmerings of the truth. But for Raoul's indiscreet exclamations,
however, nothing probably would have come of these indistinct fancies;
and we are to refer all that followed to those unguarded outbreakings of
the Frenchman's humor, rather than to any very clear process of
ratiocination on the part of the vice-governatore.

Just as Cuffe made the declaration last recorded, Andrea stepped up to
the spot where he and Griffin were conversing apart and whispered a few
words in the ear of the latter.

"The d--l!" exclaimed the lieutenant, in English. "If what the
vice-governatore tells me be true, Captain Cuffe, the work is half done
to our hands!"

"Aye, the veechy is a good fellow at the bottom, Griffin; though he'll
never burn the bay of Naples. What has he to say now?"

Griffin led his captain a little aside and conferred a moment with him
alone. Orders were then passed to the officer of the watch, when Cuffe
and his companions went below like men in a hurry.

Chapter XVI.

"What countryman, I pray?"
"Of Mantua."
"Of Mantua, Sir?--marry, God forbid
And come to Papua, careless of your life?"

_Taming of the Shrew_.

During the momentous five minutes occupied in these private movements,
Raoul affected to be gaping about in vulgar astonishment, examining the
guns, rigging, ornaments of the quarter-deck, etc.; though, in truth,
nothing that passed among those near him escaped his vigilant attention.
He was uneasy at the signs of the times, and now regretted his own
temerity; but still he thought his incognito must be impenetrable. Like
most persons who fancy they speak a foreign language well, he was
ignorant, too, in how many little things he betrayed himself; the
Englishman, _cateris paribus,_ usually pronou