As it has been already suggested, Carlo’s popularity was due in a very large measure to his astounding luck; nor did it desert him now. For forty-eight hours was Pisani compelled to endure his agony, in order that Carlo might arrive exactly at the right moment—not an hour too soon to spoil the splendid effect of his seemingly miraculous appearance upon the scene, not an hour too late to save Pisani and Venice.
It was at daybreak that Pisani, despair in his heart, climbed out of his cabin and mechanically swept the horizon with his eyes. For some minutes he staid there, unwilling to turn away from the clean, open sea to the sight of the prize which he was being forced to give up when it was already in his grasp. How his heart must have ached, as he recalled the gathering of the citizens, the prayers, the shouting and boasting, the speeches of the Doge, the “do or die” ranting of the weak-backed people, who, having seen war (for they had, up till then, been a highly respectable community and had hired their fighting men by the month or year, as they needed them), were, of course, perfectly ready to plunge in it, and still more ready, once they began to feel the weight of it, to crawl out again.
His dreary meditations were suddenly disturbed by a cry from aloft, and he came to himself with a start as the cry was repeated.
It was a sail, and, in answer to his furiously anxious questions, the lookout presently reported that it was that of a fighting-vessel, and that there were more of them coming up behind her.
At last he shouted down that he had counted eighteen of them—and then Pisani, frantic to know the worst or the best as speedily as possible, despatched a light boat to reconnoitre and see if this were light or darkness that was descending upon him.
The little boat shot away into the morning haze and, when almost within hailing distance of the leading vessel, her crew straining their eyes to catch any hint which might tell them who and what these new arrivals were, they saw a flag broken out from the peak.
It was the banner of St. Mark, and, with a yell of delight, they went about and raced for Pisani’s flagship. Their demigod had arrived!
It was a long story that he had to tell when the Doge met him, and it must have been balm to the wounded heart of the former when he heard how Carlo had ravaged the Genoese coast, captured Genoese convoys, dislocated Genoese trade with the East, and, to crown his triumphs, had captured a Genoese galley off Rhodes, with half a million pieces of gold in it.