“You are a son, signor, of Sir John Constantine?” he asked, in soft Italian.

“I am his only son, sir,” I answered him in the same language.

“Ah!  You speak my tongue?” A gleam of joy passed over his grave features.  “And you are his son?  So!  I should have guessed it at once, for you bear great likeness to him.”

“You know my father, sir?”

“Years ago.”  His hands, which he used expressively, seemed to grope in a far past.  “I come to him also from one who knew him years ago.”

“Upon what business, sir!—­if I am allowed to ask.”

“I bring a message.”

“You bring a tolerably full one, then,” said I, glancing first at the disorder on deck and from that down to the recumbent figures in the hold.

“I speak for them,” he went on, having followed the glance.  “It is most necessary that they keep silence; but I speak for all.”

“Then, sir, as it seems to me, you have much to say.”

“No,” he answered slowly; “very little, I think; very little, as you will see.”

Here Captain Jo interrupted us.  He had stepped back to steady the wheel, but I fancy that the word silenzio must have reached him, and that, small Italian though he knew, with this particular word the voyage had made him bitterly acquainted.

“Dumb!” he shouted.  “Dumb as gutted haddocks!”

“Dumb!” I echoed, while the two seamen forward heard and laughed.

“It is their vow,” said the monk, gravely, and seemed on the point to say more.

But at this moment Captain Pomery sang out “Gybe-O!” At the warning we ducked our heads together as the boom swung over and the Gauntlet, heeling gently for a moment, rounded the river-bend in view of the great house of Constantine, set high and gazing over the folded woods.  A house more magnificently placed, with forest, park, and great stone terraces rising in successive tiers from the water’s edge, I do not believe our England in those days could show; and it deserved its site, being amply classical in design, with a facade that, discarding mere ornament, expressed its proportion and symmetry in bold straight lines, prolonged by the terraces on which tall rows of pointed yews stood sentinel.  Right English though it was, it bore (as my father used to say of our best English poetry) the stamp of great Italian descent, and I saw the monk give a start as he lifted his eyes to it.

“We have not these river-creeks in Italy,” said he, “nor these woods, nor these green lawns; and yet, if those trees, aloft there, were but cypresses—­” He broke off.  “Our voyage has a good ending,” he added, half to himself.