The Proserpine stood in until the day had advanced far enough to enable her lookouts to detect le Feu-Follet braving her, as it might be, in the western board, at the distance of about a league and a half, under her jib and jigger, as described.  This sight produced a great commotion in the ship, even the watch below “tumbling up,” to get another sight of a craft so renowned for evading the pursuit of all the English cruisers of those seas.  A few minutes later Griffin came off, chopfallen and disappointed.  His first glance at the countenance of his superior announced a coming storm; for the commander of a vessel of war is no more apt to be reasonable under disappointment than any other potentate.  Captain Cuffe had not seen fit to wait for his subordinate on deck; but as soon as it was ascertained that he was coming off in a shore-boat, he retired to his cabin, leaving orders with the first lieutenant, whose name was Winchester, to send Mr. Griffin below the instant he reported himself.

“Well, sir,” commenced Cuffe, as soon as his lieutenant came into the after-cabin, without offering him a seat—­“here we are; and out yonder two or three leagues at sea is the d—­d Few-Folly!” for so most of the seamen of the English service pronounced “Feu-Follet.”

“I beg your pardon, Captain Cuffe,” answered Griffin, who found himself compelled to appear a delinquent, whatever might be the injustice of the stiuation; “it could not be helped.  We got in in proper time; and I went to work with the deputy-governor and an old chap of a magistrate who was with him, as soon as I could get up to the house of the first.  Yvard had been beforehand with me:  and I had to under-run about a hundred of his lying yarns before I could even enter the end of an idea of my own—­”

“You speak Italian, sir, like a Neapolitan born; and I depended on your doing everything as it should have been.”

“Not so much like a Neapolitan, I hope, Captain Cuffe, as like a Tuscan or a Roman,” returned Griffin, biting his lip.  “After an hour of pretty hard and lawyer-like work, and overhauling all the documents, I did succeed in convincing the two Elban gentry of my own character, and of that of the lugger!”

“And while you were playing advocate, Master Raoul Yvard coolly lifted his anchor and walked out of the bay as if he were just stepping into his garden to pick a nosegay for his sweetheart!”

“No, sir, nothing of the sort happened.  As soon as I had satisfied the Signor Barrofaldi, the vice-governatore—­”

“Veechy-govern-the-tory.  D—­n all veechys, and d—­n all the governatorys, too; do speak English, Griffin, on board an English ship, if you please, even should your Italian happen to be Tuscan.  Call the fellow vice-governor at once, if that be his rank.”

“Well, sir, as soon as I had satisfied the vice-governor that the lugger was an enemy, and that we were friends, everything went:  smoothly enough.  He wanted to sink the lugger as she lay at her anchor.”