"Oh, I begin to understand you, Captain Cuffe. Why, if the truth must be said, we came in the lugger the Few-Folly."
"I supposed as much. And when you went to visit this aunt where did you leave the lugger?"
"We didn't leave her at all, sir; being under her canvas, our feet were no sooner in the boat and the line cast off than she left us as if we had been stuck up like a tree on dry ground."
"Where did this happen?"
"Afloat, of course, Captain Cuffe; such a thing would hardly come to pass ashore."
"All that I understand; but you say the prisoner left his vessel in order to visit an aunt of the young woman's; thence he went into the Bay for the sole purpose of finding the young woman herself. Now, this is an important fact, as it concerns the prisoner's motives and may affect his life. The court must act with all the facts before it; as a commencement, tell us where Raoul Yvard left his lugger to go on yonder headland."
"I do not think, Captain Cuffe, you've got the story exactly right. Captain Rule didn't go on the mountain, a'ter all, so much to see the aunt as to see the niece at the aunt's dwelling; if one would eend right in a story, he must begin right."
"I left le Feu-Follet, Monsieur le Capitaine," Raoul calmly observed, "not two cables' length from the very spot where your own ship is now lying; but it was at an hour of the night when the good people of Capri were asleep, and they knew nothing of our visit. You see the lugger is no longer here."
"And do you confirm this story under the solemnity of your oath?" demanded Cuffe of Ithuel, little imagining how easy it was to the witness to confirm anything he saw fit in the way he mentioned.
"Sartain; every word is true, gentlemen," answered Ithuel. "It was not more than a cable's length from this very spot, according to my judgment."