I can find a safer, if not a more
honest employment, than to be running about with my master's secrets in
the air."
"And I am wiser than to let every Jew broker in San Marco, here, have a
peep into my charter-party."
"Nay, old acquaintance, there is some difference between our
occupations, after all. A padrone of a felucca cannot, in justice, be
compared to the most confidential gondolier of a Neapolitan duke, who
has an unsettled right to be admitted to the Council of Three Hundred."
"Just the difference between smooth water and rough--you ruffle the
surface of a canal with a lazy oar, while I run the channel of Piombino
in a mistral, shoot the Faro of Messina in a white squall, double Santa
Maria di Leuca in a breathing Levanter, and come skimming up the
Adriatic before a sirocco that is hot enough to cook my maccaroni, and
which sets the whole sea boiling worse than the caldrons of Scylla."
"Hist!" eagerly interrupted the gondolier, who had indulged, with
Italian humor, in the controversy for preeminence, though without any
real feeling, "here comes one who may think, else, we shall have need of
his hand to settle the dispute--Eccolo!"
The Calabrian recoiled apace, in silence, and stood regarding the
individual who had caused this hurried remark, with a gloomy but steady
air. The stranger moved slowly past. His years were under thirty, though
the calm gravity of his countenance imparted to it a character of more
mature age.
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