"Cospetto!" exclaimed the podestà. "Then we must set down this Sir Smees, after all, for an arrant rogue; for this is the very man we met at Benedetta's the past night. An Americano, Signor Tenente, is he not?"
"Why, the fellow _pretends_ to be some such thing," answered the young man, coloring, for he was loath to confess the wrong that had been done the deserter; "but half the British seamen one falls in with nowadays call themselves Americans, in order to escape serving his Majesty. I rather think this rascal is a Cornish or a Devonshire man; he has the twang and the nasal sing-song of that part of the island. If an American, however, we have a better right to him than the French; speaking our language and being descended from a common ancestry and having a common character, it is quite unnatural for an American to serve any but the English."
"I did not know that, Vice-governatore! I thought the Americani a very inferior sort of people to us Europeans, generally, and that they could scarcely claim to be our equals in any sense."
"You are quite right, Signor Podestà," said the lieutenant, briskly; "they are all you think them; and any one can see that at a glance. Degenerate Englishmen, we call them in the service."
"And yet you take them occasionally, Signor Tenente; and, as I understand from this Ithuello, frequently contrary to their wishes and by force," dryly observed Andrea Barrofaldi.
"How can we help it, Signore? The king has a right to and he has need of the services of all his own seamen; and, in the hurry of impressing, we sometimes make a mistake. Then, these Yankees are so like our own people, that I would defy the devil himself to tell them apart."
The vice-governatore thought there was something contradictory in all this, and he subsequently said as much to his friend the podestà; but the matter went no further at the moment, most probably because he ascertained that the young lieutenant was only using what might be termed a national argument; the English Government constantly protesting that it was impossible to distinguish one people from the other, _quoad_ this particular practice; while nothing was more offensive to their eyes, in the abstract, than to maintain any affinity in appearance or characteristics.