estures, Andrea assumed the office of
explaining.

"There is some extraordinary mistake in this, Signor Tenente," he said;
"for Raoul Yvard still lives. He passed this promontory just as day
dawned, in his lugger, this very morning!"

"Aye, he has got that notion from having seen the fellow we fell in with
off the harbor here," answered Cuffe, when this speech was translated to
him; "and I don't wonder at it, for the two vessels were surprisingly
alike. But the barone that we saw burned with our own eyes, Griffin, can
never float again. I say barone; for, in my opinion, the Few-Folly was
just as much of a rascal as her commander and all who sailed in her."

Griffin explained this; but it met with no favor from the two Italians.

"Not so, Signor Tenente--not so," returned the vice-governatore; "the
lugger that passed this morning, we _know_ to be le Feu-Follet, inasmuch
as she took one of our own feluccas, in the course of the night, coming
from Livorno and Raoul Yvard permitted her to come in, as he said to her
padrone, on account of the civil treatment he had received while lying
in our port. Nay, he even carried his presumption so far as to send me,
by means of the same man, the compliments of 'Sir Smees,' and his hopes
of being able some day to make his acknowledgments in person."

The English Captain received this intelligence as might be expected; and
unpleasant as it was, after putting various questions to the
vice-governatore and receiving the answers, he was obliged, unwillingly
enough, to believe it all. He had brought his official report in his
pocket; and as the conversation proceeded, he covertly tore it into
fragments so small that even a Mahommedan would reject them as not large
enough to write the word "Allah" on.

"It's d--d lucky, Griffin, that letter didn't get to Leghorn this
morning," he said, after a long pause. "Nelson would have Bronted me
famously had he got it! Yet I never believed half as devoutly in the
twenty-nine articles as--"

"I believe there are _thirty_-nine of them, Captain Cuffe," modestly put
in Griffin.

"Well, _thirty_-nine, if you will--what signifies ten, more or less, in
such matters? A man is ordered to believe them _all_, if there were a
hundred. But I never believed in _them_ as devoutly as I believed in the
destruction of that infernal picaroon. My faith is unsettled for life!"

Griffin offered a few words of condolence, but he was also too much
mortified to be ver