“Aye, so I would have told ’Maso on the spot, had the obstinate old fellow been inclined to hear me.  The distance is just about what you say; and nothing is easier than to see that the stranger is a lugger.  As to the nation—­”

“That may not be so easily told, Signore, unless the vessel show us her nag.”

“By San Antonio! thou art right, child; and it is fitting she should show us her flag.  Nothing has a right to approach so near the port of his Imperial and Royal Highness, that does not show its flag, thereby declaring its honest purpose and its nation.  My friends, are the guns in the battery loaded as usual?”

The answer being in the affirmative, there was a hurried consultation among some of the principal men in the crowd, and then the podesta walked toward the government-house with an important air.  In five minutes, soldiers were seen in the batteries, and preparations were made for levelling an eighteen-pounder in the direction of the stranger.  Most of the females turned aside, and stopped their ears, the battery being within a hundred yards of the spot where they stood; but Ghita, with a face that was pale certainly, though with an eye that was steady, and without the least indications of fear, as respected herself, intensely watched every movement.  When it was evident the artillerists were about to fire, anxiety induced her to break silence.

“They surely will not aim at the lugger!” she exclaimed. “That cannot be necessary, Signor Podesta, to make the stranger hoist his flag.  Never have I seen that done in the south.”

“You are unacquainted with our Tuscan bombardiers, Signorina,” answered the magistrate, with a bland smile, and an exulting gesture.  “It is well for Europe that the grand duchy is so small, since such troops might prove even more troublesome than the French!”

Ghita, however, paid no attention to this touch of provincial pride, but, pressing her hands on her heart, she stood like a statue of suspense, while the men in the battery executed their duty.  In a minute the match was applied, and the gun was discharged.  Though all her companions uttered invocations to the saints, and other exclamations, and some even crouched to the earth in terror, Ghita, the most delicate of any in appearance, and with more real sensibility than all united expressed in her face, stood firm and erect.  The flash and the explosion evidently had no effect on her; not an artillerist among them was less unmoved in frame, at the report, than this slight girl.  She even imitated the manner of the soldiers, by turning to watch the flight of the shot, though she clasped her hands as she did so, and appeared to wait the result with trembling.  The few seconds of suspense were soon past, when the ball was seen to strike the water fully a quarter of a mile astern of the lugger, and to skip along the placid sea for twice that distance further, when it sank to the bottom by its own gravity.