The stranger shook his head, as if not comprehending what was said.
“That’s it,” whispered Jem, in a tone of terror. “He don’t speak. He never does.”
Bowse repeated the question, in the lingua Franca of those seas.
The stranger shook his head.
“He does not understand our lingo,” observed Bowse. “Here, Timmins, you speak a little Italian—just ask this gentleman what he wants aboard here.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the mate coming forward, and asking the question in execrable Italian.
Again the stranger shook his head, as if not comprehending the question, and finding that not much progress was likely to be made at this rate, he turned round, and leaning through the gangway, beckoned his companion to come on deck. As he drew back, another person appeared, dressed precisely in the same manner; but evidently very much younger. A long moustache shaded his mouth, and wild elf-locks concealed the greater portion of his face, and from a patch down one side of his cheek, he looked as if, like his elder companion, he had been engaged in some severe fighting. The light of the lantern, as he reached the deck, seemed particularly to annoy him, and he stood with his eyes cast on the deck, shading them with one of his hands, nor could he meet the glance of any of those surrounding him.
“What do you wish to explain?” said the second stranger in Italian, bowing with a not ungraceful bend, and a touch of his hand to his cap.
“Oh! you can speak, can you? Well, that’s all right,” said Timmins. “And now, if you please, tell us why it is the felucca there was so anxious to speak to us?”
“Si, signor,” answered the younger stranger, very slowly; and in an Italian which was mostly understood, he then explained that the speronara, of which his father was master, had, that afternoon, fallen in with an Austrian man-of-war brig, which had brought her to, and sent a boat on board her. The officers, he said, informed them that the noted Greek pirate Zappa, in his famous brig the Sea Hawk, had lately been heard of not far from the mouth of the Adriatic, and that he had plundered and destroyed several vessels. The Austrian, he said, had given him despatches for the governor of Malta, relative to the subject, as also to the Neapolitan Government, with a reward for carrying them, and had charged them to inform all vessels they should fall in with of what had occurred.