"But they say, Gino, that thy Council of Three has a fashion of feeding the fishes of the Lagunes, which might throw the suspicion of his death on some unhappy Ancona-man, were the body ever to come up again." "Well, no need of bawling it aloud, as if thou wert hailing a Sicilian through thy trumpet, though the fact should be so. To say the truth, there are few men in business who are thought to have more custom than he who has just gone up the piazzetta." "Two sequins!" rejoined the Calabrian, enforcing his meaning by a significant grimace. "Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed. Not a caratano less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art. Your blows, for two sequins, leave a man leisure to tell tales, or even to say his prayers half the time." "Jacopo!" ejaculated the other, with an emphasis which seemed to be a sort of summing up of all his aversion and horror. The gondolier shrugged his shoulders with quite as much meaning as a man born on the shores of the Baltic could have conveyed by words; but he too appeared to think the matter exhausted. "Stefano Milano," he added, after a moment of pause, 'there are things in Venice which he who would eat his maccaroni in peace, would do well to forget. Let thy errand in port be what it may, thou art in good season to witness the regatta which will be given by the state itself to-morrow." "Hast thou an oar for that race?" "Giorgio's, or mine, under the patronage of San Teodoro. The prize will be a silver gondola to him who is lucky or skilful enough to win; and then we shall have the nuptials with the Adriatic." "Thy nobles had best woo the bride well; for there are heretics who lay claim to her good will. I met a rover of strange rig and miraculous fleetness, in rounding the headlands of Otranto, who seemed to have half a mind to follow the felucca in her path towards the Lagunes." "Did the sight warm thee at the soles of thy feet, Gino dear?" "There was not a turbaned head on his deck, but every sea-cap sat upon a well covered poll and a shorn chin. Thy Bucentaur is no longer the bravest craft that floats between Dalmatia and the islands, though her gilding may glitter brightest. There are men beyond the pillars of Hercules who are not satisfied with doing all that can be done on their own coasts, but who are pretending to do much of that which can be done on ours." "The republic is a little aged, caro, and years need rest. The joints of the Bucentaur are racked by time and many voyages to the Lido. I have heard my master say that the leap of the winged lion is not as far as it was, even in his young days."