It has been mentioned that Ithuel would not consent to trust himself near the Proserpine without disguising his person.  Raoul being well provided with all the materials for a masquerade, this had been effected by putting a black curling wig over his own lank, sandy hair, coloring his whiskers and eyebrows, and trusting the remainder to the transformation which might be produced by the dress, or rather undress, of a Neapolitan waterman.  The greatest obstacle to this arrangement had been a certain queue, which Ithuel habitually wore in a cured eel-skin that he had brought with him from America, eight years before, and both of which, “queue and eel-skin,” he cherished as relics of better days.  Once a week this queue was unbound and combed, but all the remainder of the time it continued in a solid mass quite a foot in length, being as hard and about as thick as a rope an inch in diameter.  Now, the queue had undergone its hebdomadal combing just an hour before Raoul announced his intention to proceed to Naples in the yawl, and it would have been innovating on the only thing that Ithuel treated with reverence to undo the work until another week had completed its round.  The queue, therefore, was disposed of under the wig in the best manner that its shape and solidity would allow.

Ithuel was left in the fore-cabin, and his presence was announced to Cuffe.

“It’s no doubt some poor devil belonging to the Few-Folly’s crew,” observed the English Captain, in a rather compassionate manner, “and we can hardly think of stringing him up, most probably for obeying an order.  That would never do, Griffin:  so we’ll just step out and overhaul his log in French, and send him off to England to a prison-ship, by the first return vessel.”

As this was said, the four in the after-cabin left it together and stood before this new prisoner.  Of course Ithuel understood all that was said in English, while the very idea of being catechized in French threw him into a cold sweat.  In this strait the idea suddenly crossed his mind that his greatest security would be in feigning dumbness.

“Ecoutez, mon ami” commenced Griffin, in very respectable English-French, “you are to tell me nothing but the truth, and it may be all the better for you.  You belong to the Feu-Follet, of course?”

Ithuel shook his head in strong disgust and endeavored to make a sound that he intended to represent a dumb man struggling to utter the word “Napoli.”

“What is the fellow after, Griffin?” said Cuffe.  “Can it be he doesn’t understand French?  Try him a touch in Italian, and let us see what he will say to that.”