on another's pleasure. With folded arms, a body poised on one
leg, and a vacant though good-humored eye, he appeared to attend some
beck of authority ere he quitted the spot. A silken jacket, in whose
tissue flowers of the gayest colors were interwoven, the falling collar
of scarlet, the bright velvet cap with armorial bearings embroidered on
its front, proclaimed him to be a gondolier in private service.

Wearied at length with the antics of a distant group of tumblers, whose
pile of human bodies had for a time arrested his look, this individual
turned away, and faced the light air from the water. Recognition and
pleasure shot into his countenance, and in a moment his arms were
interlocked with those of a swarthy mariner, who wore the loose attire
and Phrygian cap of men of his calling. The gondolier was the first to
speak, the words flowing from him in the soft accents of his native
islands.

"Is it thou, Stefano? They said thou hadst fallen into the gripe of the
devils of Barbary, and that thou wast planting flowers for an infidel
with thy hands, and watering them with thy tears!"

The answer was in the harsher dialect of Calabria, and it was given with
the rough familiarity of a seaman.

"La Bella Sorrentina is no housekeeper of a curato! She is not a damsel
to take a siesta with a Tunisian rover prowling about in her
neighborhood. Hadst ever been beyond the Lido, thou wouldst have known
the difference between chasing the felucca and catching her."

"Kneel down and thank San Teodoro for his care. There was much praying
on thy decks that hour, caro Stefano, though none is bolder among the
mountains of Calabria when thy felucca is once safely drawn up on the
beach!"

The mariner cast a half-comic, half-serious glance upward at the image
of the patron saint, ere he replied.

"There was more need of the wings of thy lion than of the favor of thy
saint. I never come further north for aid than San Gennaro, even when it
blows a hurricane."

"So much the worse for thee, caro, since the good bishop is better at
stopping the lava than at quieting the winds. But there was danger,
then, of losing the felucca and her brave people among the Turks?"

"There was, in truth, a Tunis-man prowling about, between Stromboli and
Sicily; but, Ali di San Michele! he might better have chased the cloud
above the volcano than run after the felucca in a sirocco!"

"Thou wast chicken-hearted, Stefano!"

"I!--I was more like thy lio