nsowich himself, who thereby but half
fulfilled his vow of vengeance against the republic. And when did it
occur?" he continued with rising fury. "Was it not shortly after the
day in which that heartless villain, the Proveditore Marcello,
captured the woivode's wife, and hung her, unoffending and
defenceless, unshriven and unabsolved, upon a tree on the Dalmatian
shore?"

The Uzcoque paused, overcome by the bitter memories he was calling up,
and by the fury and hatred they revived in his breast. His eyes were
bloodshot, and the foam stood upon his lips as he concluded. The
Proveditore smiled. The favourable moment he had been waiting had
arrived, the moment when he doubted not that Dansowich would betray
himself. Taking Antonio's drawing from under his cloak, he suddenly
unrolled and held it before the Uzcoque, in such a manner that the
light of the lantern fell full upon the ghastly countenance of the old
woman.

"Behold!" said he. "Does that resemble her you speak of?"

The object of the Proveditore was gained, but he had not well
calculated all the consequences of his stratagem.

"Fiend of hell!" shouted Dansowich in a voice of thunder, while a
sudden light seemed to burst upon him. "'Tis thou who are her
murderer!" And bounding forward with a violence that at once freed him
from his fetters, which fell clattering on the dungeon floor, he
clutched the senator by the throat, and hurled him to the ground
before the astonished Venetian had time to make the slightest
resistance.

"Art thou still in being?" he muttered, while his teeth gnashed and
ground together. "I thought thee long since dead. But, no! 'twas
written thou shouldst die by my hand. Be it done to thee as thou didst
to the wife of my bosom," continued he, while kneeling on the breast
of the Proveditore, and compressing his throat in an iron gripe that
threatened to prove as efficacious and nearly as speedy in its
operation as the bow-string of the Turk. In vain did Marcello struggle
violently to free himself from the crushing pressure of the pirate's
fingers. Although a very powerful man, and in the full vigour of his
strength, the disadvantage at which he had been taken prevented his
being a match for the old Uzcoque, whose sinews were braced by a long
life of hardship. Fortunately, however, for the Venetian, the furious
shout of Dansowich had been overheard by the guards and jailers, who
now rushed into the dungeon, and rescued the half strangled