“I will tell you when to cover yourself,” he said, speaking at the horizon.  “We shall have to spend the day under one of the islands.  I have some bread and cheese and water, and there are onions.  When it is night I will just slip into our canal at Murano, and you can sleep in the laboratory, as if you had never left it.”

“If they find me there, they cannot say that I am hiding,” said Zorzi with a low laugh.

“Lie low,” said Pasquale softly.  “There is a boat coming.”

For ten minutes neither spoke, and Zorzi lay quite still, covering his face.  When the danger was past Pasquale began to talk again, and told him all he himself knew of what had happened, which was not much, but which included the assurance that the master was for him, and had turned against Giovanni.

“As for me,” said Zorzi, by and by, when they were moored to a stake, far out in the lagoon, “I was whirled from place to place by those two men, till I did not know where I was.  When they first carried me off, they made me lie in the bottom of their boat as I am lying now, and they took me to a house somewhere near the Baker’s Bridge.  Do you know the house of the Agnus Dei?”

Pasquale grunted.

“It was not far from that,” Zorzi continued.  “Aristarchi lives there.  The mate went back to the ship, I suppose, and Aristarchi’s servant gave us supper.  Then we slept quietly till morning and I stayed there all day, but Aristarchi thought it would not be safe to keep me in his house the next night—­that was last night.  He said he feared that a certain lady had guessed where I was.  He is a mysterious individual, this Greek!  So I was taken somewhere else in the bottom of a boat, after dark.  I do not know where it was, but I think it must have been the garret of some tavern where they play dice.  After midnight I heard a great commotion below me, and presently Aristarchi appeared at the window with a rope.  He always seems to have a coil of rope within reach!  He tied me to him—­it was like being tied to a wild horse—­and he got us safely down from the window to the boat again, and the mate was in it, and they took me to the ship faster than I was ever rowed in my life.  You know the rest.”

All through the long July day they lay in the fierce sun, shading themselves with the sacking as best they could.  But when it was dark at last, Pasquale cast off and headed the skiff for Murano.

CHAPTER XXII

Jacopo Contarini’s luck at dice had changed of late, and his friends no longer spoke of losing like him, but of winning as he did, on almost every throw.

“Nevertheless,” said the big Foscari to Zuan Venier, “his love affairs seem to prosper!  The Georgian is as beautiful as ever, and he is going to marry a rich wife.”

It was the afternoon of the day on which Zorzi had left Aristarchi’s ship, and the two patricians were lounging in the shady Merceria, where the overhanging balconies of the wooden houses almost met above, and the merchants sat below in the windows of their deep shops, on the little platforms which were at once counters and window-sills.  The street smelt of Eastern silks and Spanish leather, and of the Egyptian pastils which the merchants of perfumery continually burnt in order to attract custom.