All around him looked ominous and hostile. He saw many Italian faces, but they scowled at him with vindictive hate; in the rear were English mariners, peering curiously over the shoulders of the foreigners, and with a broad grin on their open countenances. Suddenly, as the count thus stood perplexed, cowering, stupefied, there burst from all the Italians present a hoot of unutterable scorn, “Il traditore! il traditore!” (the traitor! the traitor!)
The count was brave, and at the cry he lifted his head with a certain majesty.
At that moment Harley, raising his hand as if to silence the hoot, came forth from the group by which he had been hitherto standing, and towards him the count advanced with a bold stride.
“What trick is this?” he said, in French, fiercely. “I divine that it is you whom I can single out for explanation and atonement.”
“Pardieu, Monsieur le Comte,” answered Harley, in the same language, which lends itself so well to polished sarcasm and high-bred enmity, “let us distinguish. Explanation should come from me, I allow; but atonement I have the honour to resign to yourself. This vessel—”
“Is mine!” cried the count. “Those men, who insult me, should be in my pay.”
“The men in your pay, Monsieur le Comte, are on shore, drinking success to your voyage. But, anxious still to procure you the gratification of being amongst your own countrymen, those whom I have taken into my pay are still better Italians than the pirates whose place they supply; perhaps not such good sailors; but then I have taken the liberty to add to the equipment of a vessel which cost me too much to risk lightly, some stout English seamen, who are mariners more practised than even your pirates. Your grand mistake, Monsieur le Comte, is in thinking that the ‘Flying Dutchman’ is yours. With many apologies for interfering with your intention to purchase it, I beg to inform you that Lord Spendquick has kindly sold it to me. Nevertheless, Monsieur le Comte, for the next few weeks I place it—men and all—at your service.”
Peschiera smiled scornfully.
“I thank your Lordship; but since I presume that I shall no longer have the travelling companion who alone could make the voyage attractive, I shall return to shore, and will simply request you to inform me at what hour you can receive the friend whom I shall depute to discuss that part of the question yet untouched, and to arrange that the atonement, whether it be due from me or yourself, may be rendered as satisfactory as you have condescended to make the explanation.”
“Let not that vex you, Monsieur le Comte; the atonement is, in much, made already; so anxious have I been to forestall all that your nice sense of honour would induce so complete a gentleman to desire. You have ensnared a young heiress, it is true; but you see that it was only to restore her to the arms of her father. You have juggled an illustrious kinsman out of his heritage; but you have voluntarily come on board this vessel, first, to enable his Highness the Prince Von ———, of whose rank at the Austrian Court you are fully aware, to state to your emperor that he himself has been witness of the manner in which you interpreted his Imperial Majesty’s assent to your nuptials with a child of one of the first subjects in his Italian realm; and, next, to commence by an excursion to the seas of the Baltic the sentence of banishment which I have no doubt will accompany the same act that restores to the chief of your House his lands and his honours.”