Some beast of the night had bitten little Ina on the right eyelid, and when we arose in the morning the eye was almost closed. CHAPTER XII ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY Bright and early I set about contriving some method of getting out of Italy in the guise I wished. I could not get an Italian passport in Naples, for the same reason I could not get one in Gualtieri. I could not get a birth certificate in the municipality, for the very good reason that I had not been born there. Yet I must have a passport, either Italian or American, if I wished to be allowed to go aboard the _Prinzessin Irene_ as a third-class passenger. If I desired that my wife and I should travel first-class no questions would be asked us by anybody, either in Naples or New York. That would ruin my chain of investigation. I must go in the steerage, and I must go through Ellis Island. With American credentials I would leave the _Prinzessin Irene_ at the docks in New York, which I did not desire to do, and without the credentials I could not get on board the ship. It was truly a puzzling situation. I sounded first the underground methods, of which I will have more to say later, and found that they were too dangerous to my work. Then I decided to go aboard as an American and get off as an Italian, and to go aboard as an American I must go to the consulate, make application for a passport, and then, having been properly identified, hurry to the American embassy in Rome and get the passport, a paper which only the ambassador can issue. The American consul in Naples is A. Homer Byington, a name famous among journalists from Maine to California; and, going to the consulate, I made a clean breast of the whole affair to Mr. Homer M. Byington, his vice-consul. “It is a shame to let a good story fall down,” said he. “Wait till I can get Mr. St. Ledger, our vice-consul, on the docks, and we will see what can be done.” In half an hour I had the assurance that Com. Aillo, chief officer at the Capitaneria, would allow me to pass without a passport, Mr. St. Ledger being my sponsor. I had yet to buy our tickets, and, going to the offices of Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, the North German Lloyd broker, the man who handles all the third-class passengers, I applied for a ticket, and was refused because I had no passport, as the law under which the government selects the brokers of emigrants’ tickets strictly forbids a ticket being sold to an emigrant unless he has a passport.