Raul understood the plain; but it struck him as hopeless.  It seemed impossible that Ghita could be permitted to quit the ship without a hundred eyes watching her movements, and, though it was dark, it was far from being sufficiently so to suppose it practicable for any one to join her and not be seen.  Yet this risk must be taken, or escape was out of the question.  An order given through the trumpet was encouraging; it announced that the officer of the watch was employed at some duty that must draw his attention another way.  This was a great deal; few presuming to look aside while this functionary was inviting their attention in another direction.  Raoul’s brain was in a whirl.  The two Italians were at the height of their discussion; and, fortunately, the clamor they made was at the loudest.  Even the suppressed laughter of the officers, on the outside of the canvas, was audible to him; though the disputants could hear nothing but their own voices.  Every knock of the boat against the ship’s side, every sound of the oars, as Carlo’s foot rattled them about, and the wash of the water, was audible.  It seemed as if all the interests of life—­the future, the past, and the present, together with the emotions of his whole heart, were compressed into that single instant.  Ignorant of what was expected, he asked Ithuel, in French, the course he ought to take.

“Am I to fall I head-foremost into the water?  What would you have of me?” he whispered.

“Lie quiet, till I tell you to move.  I’ll make the signal, Captain Rule; let the Eyetalians blaze away.”

Raoul could not see the water, as he lay with his head fairly in the port; and he had to trust entirely to the single sense of hearing.  Knock, knock, knock; the boat dropped slowly along the ship’s side, as if preparing to shove off.  All this, Carlo Giuntotardi managed exceedingly well.  When he lay immediately beneath the main-channels, it would not have been an easy thing to see his boat, even had there been any one on the lookout.  Here he held on; for he was not so lost to external things as not fully to understand what was expected of him.  Perhaps he was less attended to by those on deck, from the circumstance that no one believed him capable of so much worldly care.

“Is everything safe for a movement, inboard?” whispered Ithuel.

Raoul raised his head and looked about him.  That a group was collected around the state-room he understood by the movements, the low conversation, and the suppressed laughter; still, no one seemed to be paying any attention to himself.  As he had not spoken for some time, however, he thought it might be well to let his voice be heard; and taking care that it should sound well within the port, he made one of the light objections to the vice-governatore’s theory, that he had urged at the commencement of the controversy.  This was little heeded, as he expected; but it served to make those without know that he was in his prison, and might prevent an untimely discovery.  Everything else seemed propitious; and lying down again at his length, his face came within a few inches of Ithuel’s.