lower and still unfurnished chamber
as a sort of council-hall, where he summoned Vlacco and some of his
chief officers to consult what, under the present circumstances, it
would be necessary for them to do.

As soon as old Vlacco and one or two others had arrived, he sent to have
all the prisoners brought before him, that he might examine them
respecting their object in venturing on his island, and their motive for
leaving it. His visit to the _Ione_ must be remembered, and that he
there only learned that her captain had gone on a secret expedition, and
he naturally concluded that he was accompanied by his own crew. His
surprise was, therefore, very great, when Captain Vassilato, Bowse, and
the Maltese, Pietro, were dragged rudely into his presence.

"What!" he muttered, as he saw the honest skipper. "Have my people
again done their work so clumsily, that another vessel has floated to
bear evidence against me? It must be he, and yet he looks so
unconscious of having seen me before, that I must be deceived. There
were five prisoners," he remarked, aloud. "Where are the other two?"

"We cannot find them, chief," was the answer. "We have looked in every
direction, we have inquired of all, but no one has seen them or heard of
them."

"How is this?" exclaimed Zappa. "I left one of them, whom I knew to be
no other than the captain of an English ship of war, sent here to watch
the _Sea Hawk_, wounded and dying in old Listi's boat, with the stranger
lady and her attendant watching him, and as they, I hear, have already
returned here, I suppose they would not have deserted him. Let them and
the Lady Nina be summoned."

In two minutes the two ladies and Marianna stood before him; but he
neither rose nor showed them any courtesy.

"Can you inform me, signora, where Captain Fleetwood is to be found?" he
exclaimed, with vehemence, addressing Miss Garden, in Italian. "Ah, you
thought I was so blind as not to recognise him; you thought I did not
observe the fond affection with which you bent over him as he lay
wounded in the boat; indeed, you fancied that we keep so careless a
watch in this island, that any strangers may come without our
discovering them; but let that hope desert you for the future, and now
answer me truly, madam."

This was the first intimation that Ada had received that the disguise of
Fleetwood had been seen through, and horror at what the consequences
might be almost made her sink fainting on the