“Ohe, Cesar!” he yelled contemptuously to the spluttering wretch.  “Catch hold of that mooring hawser—­charogne!”

He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.

“What about Cesar?” I asked anxiously.

“Canallia!  Let him hang there,” was his answer.  And he went on talking over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse.  I tried to dismiss it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very sick.  Presently Dominic, hailing an idle boatman, directed him to go and fish his nephew out; and by-and-by Cesar appeared walking on board from the quay, shivering, streaming with filthy water, with bits of rotten straws in his hair and a piece of dirty orange-peel stranded on his shoulder.  His teeth chattered; his yellow eyes squinted balefully at us as he passed forward.  I thought it my duty to remonstrate.

“Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?” I asked.  Indeed, I felt convinced it was no earthly good—­a sheer waste of muscular force.

“I must try to make a man of him,” Dominic answered hopelessly.

I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the risk of making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini, “a demnition damp, unpleasant corpse of him.”

“He wants to be a locksmith!” burst out Cervoni.  “To learn how to pick locks, I suppose,” he added with sardonic bitterness.

“Why not let him be a locksmith?” I ventured.

“Who would teach him?” he cried.  “Where could I leave him?” he asked, with a drop in his voice; and I had my first glimpse of genuine despair.  “He steals, you know, alas!  Par ta Madonne!  I believe he would put poison in your food and mine—­the viper!”

He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to heaven.  However, Cesar never dropped poison into our cups.  One cannot be sure, but I fancy he went to work in another way.

This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to range far afield for sufficient reasons.  Coming up from the South to end it with the important and really dangerous part of the scheme in hand, we found it necessary to look into Barcelona for certain definite information.  This appears like running one’s head into the very jaws of the lion, but in reality it was not so.  We had one or two high, influential friends there, and many others humble but valuable because bought for good hard cash.  We were in no danger of being molested; indeed, the important information reached us promptly by the hands of a Custom-house officer, who came on board full of showy zeal to poke an iron rod into the layer of oranges which made the visible part of our cargo in the hatchway.