Part 47 (1/2)

”If they catch me,” answered Pasquale, ”they will heave me overboard. I am not worth salting. But they need not catch either of us. Once in the laboratory at Murano, they will never find you. That is the one place where they will not look for you.”

The mate put his head down through the small hatch overhead.

”I do not like the look of a boat that has just put off from Saint George's,” he said.

Aristarchi sprang to his feet.

”Pick him up and drop him into the porter's skiff,” he said. ”I am sick of dancing with the fellow in my arms.”

With incredible ease Aristarchi took Zorzi round the waist, mounted the cabin table and pa.s.sed him up through the hatch to the mate, who had already brought him to the Jacob's ladder at the stern before Pasquale could get there by the ordinary way.

”Quick, man!” said the mate, as the old sailor climbed over the rail.

At the same time he slipped the bight of short rope round Zorzi's body under his arms and got a turn round the rail with both parts, so as to lower him easily. Zorzi helped himself as well as he could, and in a few moments he was lying in the bottom of the skiff, covered with a piece of sacking which the mate threw down, the rope ladder was hauled up and disappeared, and when Pasquale glanced back as he rowed slowly away, the mate was leaning over the taffrail in an att.i.tude of easy unconcern.

The old porter had smuggled more than one bale of rich goods ash.o.r.e in his young days, for a captain who had a dislike of the customs, and he knew that his chance of safety lay not in speed, but in showing a cool indifference. He might have dropped down the Giudecca at a good rate, for the tide was fair, but he preferred a direction that would take him right across the course of the boat which the mate had seen coming, as if he were on his way to the Lido.

The officer of the Ten, with four men in plain brown coats and leathern belts, sat in the stern of the eight-oared launch that swept swiftly past the skiff towards the vessels at anchor. Pasquale rested on his oar a moment and turned to look, with an air of interest that would have disarmed any suspicions the officer might have entertained. But he had none, and did not bestow a second glance on the little craft with its shabby oarsman. Then Pasquale began to row again, with a long even stroke that had no air of haste about it, but which kept the skiff at a good speed. When he saw that he was out of hearing of other boats, and heading for the Lido, he began to tell what he intended to do next, in a low monotonous tone, glancing down now and then at Zorzi's face that cautiously peered at him out from the folds of the sackcloth.

”I will tell you when to cover yourself,” he said, speaking at the horizon. ”We shall have to spend the day under one of the islands. I have some bread and cheese and water, and there are onions. When it is night I will just slip into our ca.n.a.l at Murano, and you can sleep in the laboratory, as if you had never left it.”

”If they find me there, they cannot say that I am hiding,” said Zorzi with a low laugh.

”Lie low,” said Pasquale softly. ”There is a boat coming.”

For ten minutes neither spoke, and Zorzi lay quite still, covering his face. When the danger was past Pasquale began to talk again, and told him all he himself knew of what had happened, which was not much, but which included the a.s.surance that the master was for him, and had turned against Giovanni.

”As for me,” said Zorzi, by and by, when they were moored to a stake, far out in the lagoon, ”I was whirled from place to place by those two men, till I did not know where I was. When they first carried me off, they made me lie in the bottom of their boat as I am lying now, and they took me to a house somewhere near the Baker's Bridge. Do you know the house of the Agnus Dei?”

Pasquale grunted.

”It was not far from that,” Zorzi continued. ”Aristarchi lives there. The mate went back to the s.h.i.+p, I suppose, and Aristarchi's servant gave us supper. Then we slept quietly till morning and I stayed there all day, but Aristarchi thought it would not be safe to keep me in his house the next night-that was last night. He said he feared that a certain lady had guessed where I was. He is a mysterious individual, this Greek! So I was taken somewhere else in the bottom of a boat, after dark. I do not know where it was, but I think it must have been the garret of some tavern where they play dice. After midnight I heard a great commotion below me, and presently Aristarchi appeared at the window with a rope. He always seems to have a coil of rope within reach! He tied me to him-it was like being tied to a wild horse-and he got us safely down from the window to the boat again, and the mate was in it, and they took me to the s.h.i.+p faster than I was ever rowed in my life. You know the rest.”

All through the long July day they lay in the fierce sun, shading themselves with the sacking as best they could. But when it was dark at last, Pasquale cast off and headed the skiff for Murano.

CHAPTER XXII

Jacopo Contarini's luck at dice had changed of late, and his friends no longer spoke of losing like him, but of winning as he did, on almost every throw.

”Nevertheless,” said the big Foscari to Zuan Venier, ”his love affairs seem to prosper! The Georgian is as beautiful as ever, and he is going to marry a rich wife.”

It was the afternoon of the day on which Zorzi had left Aristarchi's s.h.i.+p, and the two patricians were lounging in the shady Merceria, where the overhanging balconies of the wooden houses almost met above, and the merchants sat below in the windows of their deep shops, on the little platforms which were at once counters and window-sills. The street smelt of Eastern silks and Spanish leather, and of the Egyptian pastils which the merchants of perfumery continually burnt in order to attract custom.

”I am not qualmish,” answered Venier languidly, ”yet it sickens me to think of the life Jacopo means to lead. I am sorry for the gla.s.s-maker's daughter.”

Foscari laughed carelessly. The idea that a woman should be looked upon as anything more than a slave or an object of prey had never occurred to him. But Venier did not smile.

”Since we speak of gla.s.s-makers,” he said, ”Jacopo is doing his best to get that unlucky Dalmatian imprisoned and banished. Old Beroviero came to see me this morning and told me a long story about it, which I cannot possibly remember; but it seems to me-you understand!”