Then he looked at the captain, who was eagerly perusing the documents the captain had handed him.  As his eye fell upon him, Francis started, for he recognized at once the man whose designs he had twice thwarted, Ruggiero Mocenigo, and felt that he was in deadly peril.

After reading the merchant’s communication to his agent, Ruggiero opened the letter addressed to Maria.  He had read but a few lines when he suddenly looked up, and then, with an expression of savage pleasure in his face, stepped up to Francis.

“So, Messer Hammond, the good Polani sends you to stay for a while with his daughters!  Truly, when I set out in chase this morning of that wretched rowboat, I little deemed that she carried a prize that I valued more than a loaded caravel!  It is to you I owe it that I am an exile, instead of being the honoured son-in-law of the wealthy Polani.  It was your accursed interference that brought all my misfortunes upon me; but thank Heaven my vengeance has come at last!

“Take them all below,” he said, turning to his men.  “Put the heaviest irons you have got on this fellow, and fasten them with staples into the deck.

“You thought I was going to hang you, or throw you overboard,” he went on, turning to Francis.  “Do not flatter yourself that your death will be so easy a one—­you shall suffer a thousand torments before you die!”

Francis had not spoken a word since Ruggiero first turned to him, but had stood with a tranquil and almost contemptuous expression upon his face; but every nerve and muscle of his body were strained, and in readiness to spring into action.  He had expected that Ruggiero would at once attack him, and was determined to leap upon him, and to sell his life as dearly as possible.

The sailors seized Francis and his companions, and thrust them down into the hold, which was already crowded with upwards of a hundred captives.  He was chained with heavy manacles.  In obedience to Ruggiero’s orders, staples were driven through the links of his chain deep into the deck, so that he was forced to remain in a sitting or lying posture.  The captain of the Naxos came and sat beside him.

“Who is this pirate captain, Messer Francisco, who thus knows and has an enmity against you?  By his speech he is surely a Venetian.  And yet, how comes a Venetian in command of a pirate?”

“That man is Ruggiero Mocenigo—­the same who twice attempted to carry off Messer Polani’s daughters.  The second time he succeeded, and would have been tried for the offence by the state had he not, aided by a band of Paduans, escaped from the keeping of his guard.”

“Of course I heard of it, signor.  I was away at sea at the time, but I heard how you came up at the moment when the padrone’s gondoliers had been overcome, and rescued his daughters.  And this is that villain Mocenigo, a disgrace to his name and family!”