red with wounds, was repulsive, but by no means
ignoble; his hair and beard had long been silvered over by time and
calamity; but his vast bodily strength was unimpaired, and when roused
into furious resentment, his manly chest emitted a volume of sound
that awed every listener. Upon a larger stage, and under circumstances
more favourable to the fair development of his natural powers and
dispositions, the pirate Dansowich would have become one of the most
distinguished and admirable men of his time. Placed by the accident of
birth upon the frontiers of Christian Europe, and cherishing from
early youth a belief that the highest interests of the human race were
involved in the struggle between the Crescent and the Cross, he had
embraced the glorious cause with that enthusiastic and fiery zeal
which raises men into heroes and martyrs. Too soon, however, were
these lofty aspirations checked and blighted by the anti-Christian
policy of trading Venice, the bad faith of Austria towards the Uzcoque
race, and the extortions of her counsellors. Cursing in the bitterness
of his heart, not only Turks, Austrians, and Venetians, but all
mankind, he no longer opposed the piratical tendencies of his
neglected people, and eventually headed many of their marauding
expeditions.

It was nearly midnight when Dansowich was awakened from a deep but
troubled slumber by a grating noise at the door of his dungeon.
Anxiety of mind, and still more, the effect of confinement in an
impure and stifling atmosphere, upon one accustomed to the breezes of
the Adriatic and the free air of the mountains, had impaired his
health, and his sleep was broken by harassing and painful dreams. In
that from which he now awoke, with the sweat of anguish on his brow,
he had fancied himself before the tribunal of the Inquisition. The
rack was shown to him, and they bade him choose between confession and
torture. He then thought he heard his name repeated several times in
tones deep and sepulchral. Starting up in alarm, he saw the door of
his prison open, and give admittance to a man muffled in a black
cloak, who walked up to the foot of his bed of damp straw, and threw
the rays of a dark lantern full into his dazzled eyes.

The traces of recent and strong emotion, visible at that moment on the
pirate's countenance, did not escape the Proveditore, who attributed
them, and rightly, to an artifice he had practised. Previously to
entering the dungeon, he had caused the