It was now nearly dark, and the crowd, having satisfied its idle curiosity, began slowly to disperse.  The Signor Viti remained till the last, conceiving it to be his duty to be on the alert in such troubled times; but, with all his bustling activity, it escaped his vigilance and means of observation to detect the circumstance that the stranger, while he steered into the bay with so much confidence, had contrived to bring up at a point where not a single gun from the batteries could be brought to bear on him; while his own shot, had he been disposed to hostilities, would have completely raked the little haven.  But Vito Viti, though so enthusiastic an admirer of the art, was no gunner himself, and little liked to dwell on the effect of shot, except as it applied to others, and not at all to himself.

Of all the suspicious, apprehensive, and curious, who had been collected in and about the port, since it was known the lugger intended to come into the bay, Ghita and ’Maso alone remained on watch, after the vessel was anchored.  A loud hail had been given by those intrusted with the execution of the quarantine laws, the great physical bugbear and moral mystification of the Mediterranean; and the questions put had been answered in a way to satisfy all scruples for the moment.  The “From whence came ye?” asked, however, in an Italian idiom, had been answered by “Inghilterra, touching at Lisbon and Gibraltar,” all regions beyond distrust, as to the plague, and all happening, at that moment, to give clean bills of health.  But the name of the craft herself had been given in a way to puzzle all the proficients in Saxon English that Porto Ferrajo could produce.  It had been distinctly enough pronounced by some one on board, and, at the request of the quarantine department, had been three times slowly repeated, very much after the following form; viz.: 

“Come chiamate il vostro bastimento?”

“The Wing-and-Wing.”

“Come!”

“The Wing-and-Wing.”

A long pause, during which the officials put their heads together, first to compare the sounds of each with those of his companions’ ears, and then to inquire of one who professed to understand English, but whose knowledge was such as is generally met with in a linguist of a little-frequented port, the meaning of the term.

“Ving-y-ving!” growled this functionary, not a little puzzled “what ze devil sort of name is zat!  Ask zem again.”

“Come si chiama la vostra barca, Signori Inglesi?” repeated he who hailed.

“Diable!” growled one back, in French; “she is called ze Wing-and-Wing—­’Ala e Ala,’” giving a very literal translation of the name, in Italian.

’"Ala e ala!” repeated they of the quarantine, first looking at each other in surprise, and then laughing, though in a perplexed and doubtful manner; “Ving-y-Ving!”