Was this the steamer for Venice?

Sicuro!

All that I could do in comment was to sit down; and in the mean time the steamer trembled, groaned, choked, cleared its throat, and we were under way.

“The other passengers have all gone to bed, I suppose,” I argued acutely, seeing none of them.  Nevertheless, I thought it odd, and it seemed a shrewd means of relief to ring the bell, and pretending drowsiness, to ask the steward which was my state-room.

He replied with a curious smile that I could have any of them.  Amazed, I yet selected a state-room, and while the steward was gone for the sheets and pillow-cases, I occupied my time by opening the doors of all the other state-rooms.  They were empty.

“Am I the only passenger?” I asked, when he returned, with some anxiety.

“Precisely,” he answered.

I could not proceed and ask if he composed the entire crew—­it seemed too fearfully probable that he did.

I now suspected that I had taken passage with the Olandese Volante.  There was nothing in the world for it, however, but to go to bed, and there, with the accession of a slight sea-sickness, my views of the situation underwent a total change.  I had gone down into the Maelstrom with the Ancient Mariner—­I was a Manuscript Found in a Bottle!

Coming to the surface about six o’clock A.M., I found a daylight as cheerful as need be upon the appointments of the elegant cabin, and upon the good-natured face of the steward when he brought me the caffe latte, and the buttered toast for my breakfast.  He said “Servitor suo!” in a loud and comfortable voice, and I perceived the absurdity of having thought that he was in any way related to the Nightmare-Death-in-lif
e-that-thicks-man’s-blood-with-cold.

“This is not the regular Venice steamer, I suppose,” I remarked to the steward as he laid my breakfast in state upon the long table.

No.  Properly, no boat should have left for Venice last night, which was not one of the times of the tri-weekly departure.  This was one of the steamers of the line between Trieste and Alexandria, and it was going at present to take on an extraordinary freight at Venice for Egypt.  I had been permitted to come on board because my driver said I had a return ticket, and would go.

Ascending to the deck I found nothing whatever mysterious in the management of the steamer.  The captain met me with a bow in the gangway; seamen were coiling wet ropes at different points, as they always are; the mate was promenading the bridge, and taking the rainy weather as it came, with his oil-cloth coat and hat on.  The wheel of the steamer was as usual chewing the sea, and finding it unpalatable, and making vain efforts at expectoration.

We were in sight of the breakwater outside Malamocco, and a pilot-boat was making us from the land.  Even at this point the innumerable fortifications of the Austrians began, and they multiplied as we drew near Venice, till we entered the lagoon, and found it a nest of fortresses one with another.