Comnenus looked questioningly toward the instruments that surrounded them. "Ay, we might give him a lesson. Summon Bartolommeo and bid him fetch in some wretch who awaits punishment." Comnenus nodded approval. "That is worth trying." He touched a bell, and a door behind the table opened to admit another man, very short and broad in stature. There was something familiar about his pock-marked face and barrel-like chest, and when he squinted his eyes about the room Hugh recognised him for the swart shipman who had beset the cog _Alice_ in the Narrow Seas, after striving unsuccessfully to induce the comrades to take passage with him. "Hast seen this springald before, Bartolommeo," said Mocenigo. "Ay, Magnificence. 'Tis a lusty youth and a wary." "We have hopes to induce him to hold speech with us, Bartolommeo." "That may be, lord, that may be." "I dare swear you can manage it." "Mayhap, mayhap." Bartolommeo turned to Hugh. "Dost bear me in mind, fair sir?" "Right well," returned Hugh drily. "Satan must have come to your aid, for I had hoped you were drowned ere this." Bartolommeo burst into a roar of laughter that echoed through the chamber. "Said I not 'twas a lusty cock--ay, and can crow to perfection! Know, good youth, that I am dowered with as many lives as a cat! It takes more than a dose of the Greek fire to send me to my spit in hell. And whilst we speak of that, I beseech you, tell me was the device yours or that apple-faced English shipman's?" "'Twas my comrade's," replied Hugh amusedly. "The jongleur?" "Ay." "A wise man of his hands, by St. Bacchus. Well, lords, what am I to do for the young knight?" "Show him upon another what may happen to himself, an he doth not tell what he knows," directed Mocenigo. Bartolommeo pursed up his lips. "As you will, fair sir, as you will," he assented doubtingly. "But I know this breed. 'Tis a stubborn one, a desperate one, a strong-backed one! Hast knowledge of----" "Have done," said Mocenigo. "'Tis no pleasant thought--the prospect of looking forward to having his eyes burned out. Doubt not he will weaken." "As ordered, Magnificence, as ordered," assented Bartolommeo. "Bide but a moment." He withdrew through the door by which he had entered, to return immediately dragging a miserable young Greek, whose arms and legs were fettered together. "There is naught about this to be sorry for," he remarked cheerfully, as he deposited his victim on the floor beside the brazier and beckoned several of the guards to his side. "He hath a foul record as an iconoclast, and is charged with conspiring against our good lord, the Emperor. So!" He removed one of the long-handled irons from the fire, and the guards pinned down the hapless wretch upon the floor. Hugh shut his eyes and gripped his teeth together.... There was an awful wail of agony ... a smell of burning ... a meaningless babble of pain and expostulation.