"How, Reverence?" he exclaimed. "At dawn, and whither, if you please?"
"By way of Celsa, where an infant awaits baptism—and my friends, I dare to hope, will excuse the short delay—to Messina. Where else, my good Luigi? That surely is the place where your guests can most conveniently adjust their misunderstandings."
The smuggler shrugged his shoulders.
"I am at your service, father," he said, and looked vacantly at the opposite wall. But the tail of his eye, Aylmer noted, was on Landon. Was there a message, or inquiry, in it?
"All of us," said Landon, smoothly, "must find your proposition a very practical one. May I hasten to add my approval of it?"
He looked smilingly at Aylmer, at Claire, lastly at Muhammed. The Moor—was it Aylmer's fancy?—answered with a tiny nod. There was sarcasm in this glance of Landon's; there was menace; there was—so Aylmer told himself—malignant triumph.
Padre Sigismondi nodded absently. He presented his coffee-cup to the Moor to be refilled, and as the brown liquid ran from the spout, watched it with a slow, stolid abstraction. His mental alertness seemed to be relaxing with physical refreshment. He offered no further remarks; he plied his spoon upon the polenta slowly, and yet more slowly.
Suddenly Emmanuele, the sailor, dropped his cup in the act of taking a more than usually copious draught. He looked stupidly at the coarse crockery as it broke upon the floor.
Sigismondi shook a finger at him, a finger which, somehow, he seemed to have under no proper command. "Careless one!" he mumbled. "Careless one! Where are your manners?" And then, suddenly, as if he heaved back a weight, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He threatened Luigi with his clenched fist.
"Traitorous dog!" he cried, and fell senseless to the floor.