However, Dirk's quest didn't seem to prosper. Watching his lips at their continual and ominous chewing it seemed to me that he was repeating to himself that old vow of his: "I'll follow him to the end of the world, but I'll have his heart's blood." It seemed to me in my ignorance that the end of the world couldn't be very far away. For we passed from port to port always making south, and at length bore off for the Cape and the stormy eastern seas. I saw the shores of India and walked the streets of her bazaars, and learnt much of foreign ports and ways. But always I saw Dirk's face grow darker with the evil purpose at his heart still baulked and frustrated. I wondered if I, too, should come to wear such a weight of gloom upon my brow before I had accomplished my quest. Then unaccountably we bore back upon our tracks and steered for home, Dirk still hot upon the trail, though what the clue might be which he was following I couldn't guess, nor did I greatly care to question. So with the passing of the winter and the coming of the spring we were back in European waters, and steered one morning into the bay of Naples. And here my own story began again, for I came upon Picardino, who had wandered home to his native land. I had just made the purchase of a fine stiletto, and was seated in a tavern sipping wine while I admired the tapering steel, when I heard a voice suddenly break out into a ripple of song, and immediately I remembered the minstrel of the _Snow Man_. I slipped the stiletto under my waist-cloth, and turning cried, "Picardino!" He actually stopped in his singing, and leaping towards me smothered me with kisses, chattering his delight in such a race of mingled English and Italian that I could scarcely follow a word of it, but guessed at the meaning by the profuse and ardent embraces he treated me to. It was some while before I could tear myself free. For the first onslaught over he gazed at me for a moment, and then with a cry of "Leetle Tommee!" returned to the attack. Then he whisked me away to another tavern and up a dark flight of stairs to a little room, evidently his lodging, into which he ushered me as though I were a duke, bowing for me to enter. At length we were seated, pledging each other in execrable wine, clinking glasses, and drinking with faces almost touching. And nothing would satisfy him but that I must tell my story. Where had I gone that night? What had I been doing? And so on and so forth. I told him as much as I thought he should know, merely referring to my father by saying he was dead. "Dead! Ahh!" he exclaimed, clapping a hand to his heart. "Yess, in the fierr. That sad. And he such an arteest! Yess, how he play upon the gueetarr! And you desolate, yess. How I see eet." Once more he flung his arms about me and cried, "Ah, leetle Tommee, how you desolate! You come with Picardino, yess?"