"There is some extraordinary mistake in this, Signor Tenente," he said; "for Raoul Yvard still lives. He passed this promontory just as day dawned, in his lugger, this very morning!"
"Aye, he has got that notion from having seen the fellow we fell in with off the harbor here," answered Cuffe, when this speech was translated to him; "and I don't wonder at it, for the two vessels were surprisingly alike. But the barone that we saw burned with our own eyes, Griffin, can never float again. I say barone; for, in my opinion, the Few-Folly was just as much of a rascal as her commander and all who sailed in her."
Griffin explained this; but it met with no favor from the two Italians.
"Not so, Signor Tenente--not so," returned the vice-governatore; "the lugger that passed this morning, we _know_ to be le Feu-Follet, inasmuch as she took one of our own feluccas, in the course of the night, coming from Livorno and Raoul Yvard permitted her to come in, as he said to her padrone, on account of the civil treatment he had received while lying in our port. Nay, he even carried his presumption so far as to send me, by means of the same man, the compliments of 'Sir Smees,' and his hopes of being able some day to make his acknowledgments in person."
The English Captain received this intelligence as might be expected; and unpleasant as it was, after putting various questions to the vice-governatore and receiving the answers, he was obliged, unwillingly enough, to believe it all. He had brought his official report in his pocket; and as the conversation proceeded, he covertly tore it into fragments so small that even a Mahommedan would reject them as not large enough to write the word "Allah" on.
"It's d--d lucky, Griffin, that letter didn't get to Leghorn this morning," he said, after a long pause. "Nelson would have Bronted me famously had he got it! Yet I never believed half as devoutly in the twenty-nine articles as--"
"I believe there are _thirty_-nine of them, Captain Cuffe," modestly put in Griffin.
"Well, _thirty_-nine, if you will--what signifies ten, more or less, in such matters? A man is ordered to believe them _all_, if there were a hundred. But I never believed in _them_ as devoutly as I believed in the destruction of that infernal picaroon. My faith is unsettled for life!"