“There, for example, is a person who would be quite insensible to my greatness, even if I had the consular seal in my pocket. To him we are possible smugglers; [Footnote: Under the Austrians, Venice was a free port but everything carried there to the mainland was liable to duty.] and I must say,” he continued, taking out his watch, and staring hard at it, “that if I were a disinterested person, and heard his suspicion met with the explanation that we were a little party out here for pleasure at half past twelve P. M., I should say he was right. At any rate we won’t engage him in controversy. Quick, quick!” he added to the gondoliers, glancing at the receding shore, and then at the first of the lagoon forts which they were approaching. A dim shape moved along the top of the wall, and seemed to linger and scrutinize them. As they drew nearer, the challenge, “_Wer da?_” rang out. The gondoliers eagerly answered with the one word of German known to their craft, “_Freunde_,” and struggled to urge the boat forward; the oar of the gondolier in front slipped from the high rowlock, and fell out of his hand into the water. The gondola lurched, and then suddenly ran aground on the shallow. The sentry halted, dropped his gun from his shoulder, and ordered them to go on, while the gondoliers clamored back in the high key of fear, and one of them screamed out to his passengers to do something, saying that, a few weeks before, a sentinel had fired upon a fisherman and killed him. “What’s that he’s talking about?” demanded Mrs. Vervain. “If we don’t get on, it will be that man’s duty to fire on us; he has no choice,” she said, nerved and interested by the presence of this danger. The gondoliers leaped into the water and tried to push the boat off. It would not move, and without warning, Don Ippolito, who had sat silent since they left Fusina, stepped over the side of the gondola, and thrusting an oar under its bottom lifted it free of the shallow. “Oh, how very unnecessary!” cried Mrs. Vervain, as the priest and the gondoliers clambered back into the boat. “He will take his death of cold.” “It’s ridiculous,” said Ferris. “You ought to have told these worthless rascals what to do, Don Ippolito. You’ve got yourself wet for nothing. It’s too bad!” “It’s nothing,” said Don Ippolito, taking his seat on the little prow deck, and quietly dripping where the water would not incommode the others. “Oh, here!” cried Mrs. Vervain, gathering some shawls together, “make him wrap those about him. He’ll die, I know he will--with that reeking skirt of his. If you must go into the water, I wish you had worn your abbate’s dress. How _could_ you, Don Ippolito?” The gondoliers set their oars, but before they had given a stroke, they were arrested by a sharp “Halt!” from the fort. Another figure had joined the sentry, and stood looking at them.