aken off the ridicule they both felt
they merited, blended with certain longings to redeem their characters,
by assisting in capturing the corsair, were the reasons why these two
worthies, the deputy-governor and the podesta, were now on board the
Proserpine. Cuffe had offered them cots in his cabin and seats at his
table in a moment of confidence; and the offer was gladly accepted.
Andrea had not been on board the ship a day, however, before he became
thoroughly convinced of his utter uselessness; a circumstance that
added materially to the awkwardness of his situation. Like all
well-meaning and simple-minded men, he had a strong wish to be doing;
and day and night he ruminated on the means by himself, or discussed
them in private dialogues with his friend the podesta. Vito Viti frankly
admonished him to put his faith in heaven, affirming that something
worth while would yet turn up in the cruise to render the enterprise
memorable; it being a habit with the magistrate to say an ave or two on
all trying occasions, and then trust to God.

"You never knew a miracle, vice-governatore," said Vito Viti one day,
when they were discussing the matter by themselves; "you never knew a
miracle come to pass that another was not close on its heels; the first
being a mere preparation for the last, and the last always proving to be
the most remarkable. Now, when Anina Gotti fell off the cliffs, it was a
miracle she didn't break her neck; but, when she rolled over into the
sea, it was a much greater she wasn't drowned!"

"It is better to leave these things to the church, neighbor Vito," was
the vice-governatore's answer; "nor do I see that there has been any
miracle in the affair to start with."

"How!--Do you not call it a miracle, Signor Andrea, that two such men as
you and I should be deceived, as we were beyond all doubt, by this knave
of a French corsair? I look upon it as so great a miracle myself, that
it ought to follow instead of going before its companion."

To this Andrea made an answer suitable to his greater information, and
the discourse took its usual direction toward the means of doing
something to relieve the two functionaries from the stigma that they
mutually felt now rested on their sagacity, and that, too, as this
sagacity might be considered conjointly or individually.

It was probably owing to this fever of the mind that the
vice-governatore, a man usually so simple and confiding, was now so
suspicious and k