Chapter 2

"His stock, a few French phrases, got by heart,
With much to learn, but nothing to impart;
The youth, obedient to his sire's commands,
Sets off a wanderer into foreign lands."

COWPER

It was now nearly dark, and the crowd, having satisfied its idle
curiosity, began slowly to disperse. The Signor Viti remained till the
last, conceiving it to be his duty to be on the alert in such troubled
times; but, with all his bustling activity, it escaped his vigilance and
means of observation to detect the circumstance that the stranger, while
he steered into the bay with so much confidence, had contrived to bring
up at a point where not a single gun from the batteries could be brought
to bear on him; while his own shot, had he been disposed to hostilities,
would have completely raked the little haven. But Vito Viti, though so
enthusiastic an admirer of the art, was no gunner himself, and little
liked to dwell on the effect of shot, except as it applied to others,
and not at all to himself.

Of all the suspicious, apprehensive, and curious, who had been collected
in and about the port, since it was known the lugger intended to come
into the bay, Ghita and 'Maso alone remained on watch, after the vessel
was anchored. A loud hail had been given by those intrusted with the
execution of the quarantine laws, the great physical bugbear and moral
mystification of the Mediterranean; and the questions put had been
answered in a way to satisfy all scruples for the moment. The "From
whence came ye?" asked, however, in an Italian idiom, had been answered
by "Inghilterra, touching at Lisbon and Gibraltar," all regions beyond
distrust, as to the plague, and all happening, at that moment, to give
clean bills of health. But the name of the craft herself had been given
in a way to puzzle all the proficients in Saxon English that Porto
Ferrajo could produce. It had been distinctly enough pronounced by some
one on board, and, at the request of the quarantine department, had been
three times slowly repeated, very much after the following form; viz.:

"_Come chiamate il vostro bastimento?_"

"The Wing-and-Wing."

"_Come!_"

"The Wing-and-Wing."

A long pause, during which the officials put their heads together, first
to compare the sounds of each with those of his companions' ears, and
then to inquire of one who professed to understand English, but whose
knowledge was such as is generally met with in a linguist of a
little-frequented port, the meaning of the term.

"Ving-y-ving!" growled this functionary, not a little puzzled "what ze
devil sort of name is zat! Ask zem again."

"_Come si