and drink, with ten other rogues no less deserving, from a
murderous point of view, put to watch about the ship that no strange
eye might look upon her. Item (5): The confusion of Signor Vezzia, who
made a fine tale and said at the same time with his eyes 'This is a
lie, and a bad one; I'm sorry that I have nothing better ready.' Item
(6): My own adamantine conviction that I stood near by some mystery,
which was about to be a big mystery, and which would pay me to pursue.
'A fine bundle of nonsense,' I hear you say; 'as silly a flight of a
vaporous brain as ever man conceived'--but stay your words awhile;
remember that one who is bred up at the keyhole lets himself, if he be
wise, be moved by his impulses, and first opinions. He does not quit
them until he knows them to be false. Instinct told me to go on in this
work, if I lost all other, if I starved, if I drowned, if I died at it.
And to go on I meant.

"This was my musing at the Albergo, and when it was over I laughed
aloud at its quixotic folly. 'Oh, poor fool,' I said, 'miserable,
brain-blinded, groping fool, to talk of going on when the ship sails
this night, this very night; and unless you put agents on in every part
of the globe, you will never hear of her again. What a fine piece of
dreamer's wit is yours! what a bar-parlour yarn to tell rustics in
Somerset! Get up, and mind your own business, go on with your common
labour, and let the ship and her crew go to the devil if they like.'
For the matter of that, this advice perforce I had to follow, for I did
not possess one single clue at that moment; and although I racked my
brains for one all the afternoon, and went often to the hill-top to see
if the nameless ship yet lay in the dock, I could pick up no new
thread, nor light upon any infinitesimal vein of material. The very
want of a _point d'appui_ irritated a brain already excited to a fine
condition of unrest. Any hour the ship might sail; any hour something
which would give me the name of her owner might come to me--but the
hours went on and nothing came. I dined, and was no step advanced; I
smoked cigars in three cafes, and was again at the beginning; I visited
half-a-dozen folk I knew, and drew no word to help me. At last, mocking
the whole mystery with a fine English phrase, I said, 'Let her go'; and
I returned to the Albergo and to bed. I had hunted a marine covert for
two days and had drawn blank.

"I have said that I went to bed, but it was a poor fo