“I did not know that, Vice-governatore!  I thought the Americani a very inferior sort of people to us Europeans, generally, and that they could scarcely claim to be our equals in any sense.”

“You are quite right, Signor Podesta,” said the lieutenant, briskly; “they are all you think them; and any one can see that at a glance.  Degenerate Englishmen, we call them in the service.”

“And yet you take them occasionally, Signor Tenente; and, as I understand from this Ithuello, frequently contrary to their wishes and by force,” dryly observed Andrea Barrofaldi.

“How can we help it, Signore?  The king has a right to and he has need of the services of all his own seamen; and, in the hurry of impressing, we sometimes make a mistake.  Then, these Yankees are so like our own people, that I would defy the devil himself to tell them apart.”

The vice-governatore thought there was something contradictory in all this, and he subsequently said as much to his friend the podesta; but the matter went no further at the moment, most probably because he ascertained that the young lieutenant was only using what might be termed a national argument; the English Government constantly protesting that it was impossible to distinguish one people from the other, quoad this particular practice; while nothing was more offensive to their eyes, in the abstract, than to maintain any affinity in appearance or characteristics.

The result of the discussion, notwithstanding, was to make the two Italians reluctant converts to the opinion of the Englishman, that the lugger was the dreaded and obnoxious Feu-Follet.  Once convinced, however, shame, revenge, and mortification united with duty to quicken their exertions and to render them willing assistants in executing the schemes of Captain Cuffe.  It was, perhaps, fortunate for Raoul and his associates that the English officers had so strong a desire, as Griffin expressed it, “to take the lugger alive”; else might she have been destroyed where she lay by removing a gun or two from its proper embrasure and planting them behind some natural ramparts among the rocks.  The night was dark, it is true, but not so much so as to render a vessel indistinct at the short distance at which le Feu-Follet lay; and a cannonade would have been abundantly certain.

When all parties were of a mind as to the true character of the little craft in the bay, a consultation was had on the details of the course proper to be pursued.  A window of the government-house that looked toward the direction of Capraya, or that in which the Proserpine was expected to arrive, was assigned to Griffin.  The young man took his station at it about midnight, in readiness to burn the blue-lights with which he was provided the instant he should discern the signals of his ship.  The position of this window was well adapted to the desired object, inasmuch as the lights could not be seen from the town, while they were plainly open to the sea.  The same was essentially true as to the signals of the frigate, the heights interposing between her and the houses, and there being a still greater physical impossibility that anything lying in the bay should discover an object at sea on the northern side of the promontory.