The night breeze was blowing in gusts off the shore, as it always does after a hot day in the summer, and Ruggiero took advantage of every puff of wind, while the men pulled in the intervals of calm.  The starlight was very bright and the air so clear that the lights of Naples shone out distinctly, the beginning of the chain of sparks that lies like a necklace round the sea from Posilippo to Castellamare.  The air was soft and dry, so that there was not the least moisture on the gunwale of the boat.  Every one was silent.

Then on a sudden there was a burst of music.  San Miniato had prepared it as a surprise, and the two musicians had passed unnoticed where they sat in the bows, hidden from sight by the foresail so soon as the boat was under way.  Only a mandolin and a guitar, but the best players of the whole neighbourhood.  It was very pretty, and the attempt to give pleasure deserved, perhaps, more credit than it received.

“It is charming, dearest friend!” was all the Marchesa vouchsafed to say, when the performers paused.

Beatrice sat stony and unmoved, and spoke no word.  She said to herself that San Miniato was again attempting to prepare the scenery for a comedy, and she could have laughed to think that he should still delude himself so completely.  Teresina would have clapped her hands in applause had she dared, but she did not, and contented herself with trying to see into Bastianello’s eyes.  She was very near him as she sat furthest forward in the stern-sheets and he pulled the starboard stroke oar, leaning forward upon the loom, as the gust filled the sails and the boat needed no pulling.

“You do not care for the mandolin, Donna Beatrice?” said San Miniato, with a sort of disappointed interrogation in his voice.

“Have I said that I do not care for it?” asked the young girl indifferently.  “You take too much for granted.”

Grim and silent on the stern sat Ruggiero, the tiller in his hand, his eye on the dark water to landward constantly on the look-out for the gusts that came down so quickly and which could deal treacherously with a light craft like the one he was steering.  But he had no desire to upset her to-night, nor even to bring the tiller down on his master’s head.  There was to be no bungling about the business he had in hand, no mistakes and no wasting of lives.

The mandolin tinkled and the guitar strummed vigorously as they neared Scutari point, vast, black and forbidding in the starlight.  But a gloom had settled upon the party which nothing could dispel.  It was as though the shadow of coming evil had overtaken them and were sweeping along with them across the dark and silent water.  There was something awful in the stillness under the enormous bluff, as Ruggiero gave the order to stop pulling and furl the sails, and he himself brought the skiff alongside by the painter, got in and kept her steady, laying his hand upon the gunwale of the larger boat.  Bastianello stood up to help Beatrice and Teresina.