The gondolier swept slowly onwards, singing a strain in honor of his bark, while the boat of Don Camillo darted ahead. Mystic, felucca, xebec, brigantine, and three-masted ship, were apparently floating past them, as they shot through the maze of shipping, when Gino bent forward and drew the attention of his master to a large gondola, which was pulling with a lazy oar towards them, from the direction of the Lido. Both boats were in a wide avenue in the midst of the vessels, the usual track of those who went to sea, and there was no object whatever between them. By changing the course of his own boat, Don Camillo soon found himself within an oar's length of the other. He saw, at a glance, it was the treacherous gondola by which he had been duped.
"Draw, men, and follow!" shouted the desperate Neapolitan, preparing to leap into the midst of his enemies.
"You draw against St. Mark!" cried a warning voice from beneath the canopy. "The chances are unequal, Signore; for the smallest signal would bring twenty galleys to our succor."
Don Camillo might have disregarded this menace, had he not perceived that it caused the half-drawn rapiers of his followers to return to their scabbards.
"Robber!" he answered, "restore her whom you have spirited away."
"Signore, you young nobles are often pleased to play your extravagances with the servants of the Republic. Here are none but the gondoliers and myself." A movement of the boat permitted Don Camillo to look into the covered part, and he saw that the other uttered no more than the truth. Convinced of the uselessness of further parley, knowing the value of every moment, and believing he was on a track which might still lead to success, the young Neapolitan signed to his people to go on. The boats parted in silence, that of Don Camillo proceeding in the direction from which the other had just come.
In a short time the gondola of Don Camillo was in an open part of the Giudecca, and entirely beyond the tiers of the shipping. It was so late that the moon had begun to fall, and its light was cast obliquely on the bay, throwing the eastern sides of the buildings and the other objects into shadow. A dozen different vessels were seen, aided by the land-breeze, steering towards the entrance of the port. The rays of the moon fell upon the broad surface of those sides of their canvas which were nearest to the town, and they resembled so many spotless clouds, sweeping the water and floating seaward.
"They are sending my wife to Dalmatia!" cried Don Camillo, like a man on whom the truth began to dawn.
"Signore mio!" exclaimed the astonished Gino.
"I tell thee, sirrah, that this accursed Senate hath plotted against my happiness, and having robbed me of thy mistress, hath employed one of the many feluccas that I see, to transport her to some of its strongholds on the eastern coast of the Adriatic."