“The signorino would soon have seen his fill, were he between the decks, chained to the bench for weeks together, without ceasing to row for twenty-four hours together, with a renegade standing over to lash us, or to put a morsel into our mouths if we were fainting.”
“The dogs! Do they thus use Christian men?” cried Friedel.
“Sì, sì—ja wohl. There were a good fourscore of us, and among them a Tedesco, a good man and true, from whom I learnt la lingua loro.”
“Our tongue!—from whom?” asked one twin of the other.
“A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of sue eccellenze.”
“Deutscher!” cried both boys, turning in horror, “our Germans so treated by the pagan villains?”
“Yea, truly, signorini miei. This fellow-captive of mine was a cavaliere in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his enemies, and he mourned piteously for la sposa sua—his bride, as they say here. A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the narrow deck, I grieved to leave him there when the good confraternità at Genoa paid my ransom. Having learnt to speak il Tedesco, and being no longer able to fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond the Alps; but, alas! till this moment fortune has still been adverse. My mules died of the toil of crossing the mountains; and, when with reduced baggage I came to the river beneath there—when my horses fell and my servants fled, and the peasants came down with their hayforks—I thought myself in hands no better than those of the Moors themselves.”
“It was wrongly done,” said Ebbo, in an honest, open tone, though blushing. “I have indeed a right to what may be stranded on the bank, but never more shall foul means be employed for the overthrow.”
The boys had by this time led the traveller through the Gemsbock’s Pass, within sight of the convent. “There,” said Ebbo, “will they give you harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of your goods. We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to touch your bales; so I will unload old Schimmel.”
“Ah, signorino, if I might offer any token of gratitude—”