“Perhaps you’re right, Signore; perhaps this is the ra’al truth of the matter; for the British do take our people just the same as if they had the best right in the world to ’em.  After all, we may be serving our masters; and all we say and think at home about independence is just a flash in the pan!  Notwithstanding, some on us contrive, by hook or by crook, to take our revenge when occasion offers; and if I don’t sarve master John Bull an ill turn, whenever luck throws a chance in my way, may I never see a bit of the old State again—­granite or rotten wood.”

This speech was not very closely translated, but enough was said to awaken curiosity in the vice-governatore, who thought it odd one who served among the English should entertain such feelings toward them.  As for Ithuel himself, he had not observed his usual caution; but, unknown to himself, the oily wine had more “granite” in it than he imagined, and then he seldom spoke of the abuse of impressment without losing more or less of his ordinary self-command.

“Ask the Americano when he first entered into the service of the king of Inghilterra,” said Andrea, “and why he stays in it, if it is unpleasant to him, when so many opportunities of quitting it offer?”

“I never entered,” returned Ithuel, taking the word in its technical meaning; “they pressed me, as if I had been a dog they wanted to turn a spit, and kept me seven long years fighting their accursed battles, and otherwise sarving their eends.  I was over here, last year, at the mouth of the Nile, and in that pretty bit of work—­and off Cape St. Vincent, too—­and in a dozen more of their battles, and sorely against my will, on every account.  This was hard to be borne, but the hardest of it has not yet been said; nor do I know that I shall tell on’t at all.”

“Anything the Americano may think proper to relate will be listened to with pleasure.”

Ithuel was a good deal undecided whether to go on or not; but taking a fresh pull at the flask, it warmed his feelings to the sticking point.

“Why, it was adding insult to injury.  It’s bad enough to injure a man, but when it comes to insulting him into the bargain, there must be but little grit in his natur’ if it don’t strike fire.”

“And yet few are wronged who are not calumniated,” observed the philosophical vice-governatore.  “This is only too much the case with our Italy, worthy neighbor Vito Viti.”

“I calculate the English treat all mankind alike, whether it’s in Italy or Ameriky,” for so Ithuel would pronounce this word, notwithstanding he had now been cruising in and near the Mediterranean several years; “but what I found hardest to be borne was their running their rigs on me about my language and ways, which they were all the time laughing at as Yankee conversation and usages, while they pretended that the body out of which all on it come was an English body, and so they set it up to