"That is well. Now, Messers, do you and your servants come aboard my galley. We will tow your gondola to the Palace of St. Mark."
It was nearly midnight when the police galley rounded to the landing-steps on the Square of St. Mark, and the comrades, with Beppo and Giacomo—now vastly sobered and no little troubled—were led into the vestibule of the Doge's Palace. There seats were given to them, and they waited for what seemed a long time, until a Chamberlain brought word that the Doge would see them. Even at that hour Dandolo was still engaged in official business. As the two comrades went up the stairs to the audience chamber, they passed a group of chief artisans of the Arsenal, who had been receiving instructions for the work remaining to be done to make ready the armament for the Crusade.
The ruler of Venice sat in a high-backed chair—almost a throne—behind a wide table heaped with parchments, books, maps, writing materials, models of vessels and samples of weapons and armour. He was fingering a miniature petrary when they entered. Half a dozen secretaries, shaven clerics for the most part, bustled around him.
"You must increase the length of the casting arm," he directed a bearded artisan, who stood on the opposite side of the table from him. "I will have it throw the missile as far as a land machine. If the weight must be reduced to fit it on the forecastle of the galleys, then you must save on other parts."
"But, your Highness, if we lighten the other parts it will not rest solid on the deck," objected the artisan.
"Fool!" snapped the Doge. "Bolt it to the deck with iron nails. Do not come to me again until you have succeeded."
The artisan retired, and Dandolo swept the room with his strange, wellnigh sightless eyes.
"Who else?" he asked sharply.
There was no trace of fatigue in his voice, no stoop in his thin shoulders. He carried his ninety-two years as though he had been a man of forty.
"Your Highness," said the police officer, stepping forward, "these are the prisoners, foreigners, who have demanded to be brought before you."