The sailor turned his wrinkled face on the abashed smuggler; his white teeth flashed a prodigious smile. He seemed to find nothing disconcerting in the situation, but desired to show quickness in seizing its points of humor.
"He will certainly go far, my good Emmanuele," agreed Padre Sigismondi, drily. "As far as the penal station on Procida if I am not hugely mistaken, or unless he shows a most improbable repentance. What have we here? Other warders in this private penitentiary?"
Footsteps clattered along the tiny causeway. With a rush, half a dozen figures swept up to them through the moonlight, Landon at their head. This was the answer to Signor Luigi's frantic shouts.
The rush wavered, hesitated, came to a halt. The islanders recognized the grim, aggressive form in the soutane with sharp exclamations of amazement and alarm. Landon, without their experience, felt the impalpable infection of their fear. He, too, halted, staring mistrustfully at the priest and his companions.
He shook Luigi by the elbow.
"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.
The smuggler made a deferential outward movement of his palms.
"It is a visit, an unexpected visit, from our—our vicar," he explained. "It is the Padre Sigi—Sigismondi, I should say."
The padre stepped forward and spoke in crisp, imperturbable tones.
"I am peripatetic confessor to these islands, Signor," he said. "There is a bitter need of six priests to each island, rather than six islands to a priest. It is an abode of wickedness, this. That, perhaps, has not been hidden from you?"