Little Carlo came to his senses after many hours, and, staggering forward with weakened steps, reached Mestre, where kind friends dressed his wounds.
“I shall catch this assailant,” cried he, when he had revived. “He shall rue the day that he ever touched the person of Carlo Zeno.” And forthwith he secured a number of bloodhounds with which to track the cowardly ruffian of the highway.
Luck was with the future commander of the galleons and fighting men. He ran the scurvy assailant to earth, like a fox. He captured him, bound him and handed him over to the justice of Padua,—where—for the heinousness of the offense—the man was executed. So ended the first conflict in which the renowned Carlo Zeno was engaged,—successfully—as did most of his later battles.
Not long afterwards young Zeno returned to his studies at the University, but here—as a lover of excitement—he fell into bad company. Alas! he took to gambling, and frittered away all of his ready money, so that he had to sell his books in order to play. The profit from these was soon gone. He was bankrupt at the early age of seventeen.
Ashamed to go home, the future sea rover disappeared from Padua and joined a fighting band of mercenaries (paid soldiers) who were in the employ of a wealthy Italian Prince. He was not heard of for full five years. Thus, his relatives gave him up for dead, and, when—one day—he suddenly stalked into the house of his parents, his brothers and sisters set up a great shout of wonder and amazement. “Hurrah!” cried they, “the dead has returned to his own. This is no ghost, for he speaks our own native tongue. Carlo Zeno, you shall be given the best that we have, for we believed that you had gone to another world.”
Pleased and overwhelmed with affection, young Carlo stayed for a time with his family, and then—thinking that, as he had been trained for the priesthood, he had best take charge of his canonry of Patras—he went to Greece.
“Hah! my fine fellow,” said the Governor, when he first saw him, “I hear that you are fond of fighting. It is well. The Turks are very troublesome, just now, and they need some stout Venetian blood to hold them in check. You must assist us.”
“I’ll do my best,” cried Zeno with spirit, and, he had not been there a week before the Ottomans swooped down upon the city, bent upon its demolition. The young Venetian sallied forth—with numerous fighting men—to meet them, and, in the first clash of arms, received such a gaping wound that he was given up for dead. In fact, when carried to the city, he was considered to be without life, was stretched upon a long settee, was clothed in a white sheet, and prepared for interment. But in the early morning he suddenly opened his eyes, gazed wonderingly at the white shroud which covered him, and cried, with no ill humor,
“Not yet, my friends. Carlo Zeno will disappoint all your fondest hopes. Once more I am of the world.”
And, so saying, he scrambled to his feet, much to the dismay of the sorrowing Venetians, who had been carefully spreading a number of flowers upon the prostrate form of the supposedly dead warrior.