As all this was strictly true, Ithuel related it naturally and in a way to gain some credit.
"You say you accompanied Raoul Yvard, witness, in a visit to the aunt of the young woman called Ghita Caraccioli," observed Cuffe, in a careless way that was intended to entrap Ithuel into an unwary answer--"where did you go from when you set out on your journey?"
"That would depend on the place one kept his reckoning from and the time of starting. Now, _I_ might say I started from Ameriky, which part of the world I left some years since; or I might say from Nantes, the port in which we fitted for sea. As for Captain Rule, he would probably say Nantes."
"In what manner did you come from Nantes?" continued Cuffe, without betraying resentment at an answer that might be deemed impertinent; or surprise, as if he found it difficult to comprehend. "You did not make the journey on horseback, I should think?"
"Oh, I begin to understand you, Captain Cuffe. Why, if the truth must be said, we came in the lugger the Few-Folly."
"I supposed as much. And when you went to visit this aunt where did you leave the lugger?"
"We didn't leave her at all, sir; being under her canvas, our feet were no sooner in the boat and the line cast off than she left us as if we had been stuck up like a tree on dry ground."
"Afloat, of course, Captain Cuffe; such a thing would hardly come to pass ashore."
"All that I understand; but you say the prisoner left his vessel in order to visit an aunt of the young woman's; thence he went into the Bay for the sole purpose of finding the young woman herself. Now, this is an important fact, as it concerns the prisoner's motives and may affect his life. The court must act with all the facts before it; as a commencement, tell us where Raoul Yvard left his lugger to go on yonder headland."
"I do not think, Captain Cuffe, you've got the story exactly right. Captain Rule didn't go on the mountain, a'ter all, so much to see the aunt as to see the niece at the aunt's dwelling; if one would eend right in a story, he must begin right."
"I left le Feu-Follet, Monsieur le Capitaine," Raoul calmly observed, "not two cables' length from the very spot where your own ship is now lying; but it was at an hour of the night when the good people of Capri were asleep, and they knew nothing of our visit. You see the lugger is no longer here."