Zeno slipped the cloak from his shoulders and wrapped it round the helmet, so that the captain's wife could carry both conveniently.
'It is hopeless,' she whispered, as she took them. 'This morning he promised that he would leave the prison if you could bring him out. He has often spoken to me as he spoke to you this evening—he loves the boy dearly; but I was sure that he had made up his mind to risk everything, else I would not have shown the red light.'
'After all,' Zeno observed, 'it is just as well that he would not come, since we were seen, though I really believe Gorlias was too much for the men who almost caught us. He and I together could certainly have settled them all—there were only three. I saw them distinctly when they first jumped ashore, and one was killed by the fall when I cut the rope. Gorlias silenced the other two, for if they were alive there would have been an alarm here by this time.'
'Yes,' the woman answered. 'But some one must have betrayed us. We cannot try that way again.'
'I shall not try that, or any other way again!' Zeno said with emphasis. 'In the name of the Evangelist, why should I risk my neck to free a man who prefers to be a prisoner?'
'The wonder is that you are alive this time!'
'It will not even be safe to communicate by the thread again. Will you take him a message?'
'As well as I can remember it.'
'Tell him that the next time he asks my help he must send me, by the same messenger, a deed giving Tenedos to Venice, signed and sealed. Otherwise I will not stir!'
'Shall I tell him that?'