“That will not do, Giuseppi.  The woman would refuse to speak, and though they could force her to do so in the dungeons, the girls would be sure to be removed the moment it was known she was captured.  We must follow them, and see where they go to.  Let us get well behind them, so that we can just make them out in the distance.  If they have a suspicion that they are being followed, they will land her at the first steps and slip away from us.”

“They are landing now, signor,” Giuseppi exclaimed directly afterwards.  “Shall we push on and overtake them on shore?”

“It is too late, Giuseppi.  They are a hundred and fifty yards away, and would have mixed in the crowd, and be lost, long before we should get ashore and follow them.  Row on fast, but not over towards that side.  If the gondola moves off, we will make straight for the steps and try to follow them, though our chance of hitting upon them in the narrow lanes and turnings is slight indeed.

“But if, as I hope, the gondola stops at the steps, most likely they will return to it in time.  So we will row in to the bank a hundred yards farther up the canal and wait.”

The persons who had been seen in the gondola had disappeared when they came abreast of it, and the gondolier had seated himself in the boat, with the evident intention of waiting.  Francis steered his gondola at a distance of a few yards from it as he shot past, but did not abate his speed, and continued to row till they were three or four hundred yards farther up the canal.  Then he turned the gondola, and paddled noiselessly back until he could see the outline of the boat he was watching.

An hour elapsed before any movement was visible.  Then Francis heard the sound of footsteps, and could just make out the figures of persons descending the steps and entering the gondola.  Then the boat moved out into the middle of the canal, where a few boats were still passing to and fro.  Francis kept his gondola close by the bank, so as to be in the deep shade of the houses.  The boat they were following again passed under the Ponto Maggiore, and for some distance followed the line of the Grand Canal.

“Keep your eye upon it, Giuseppi.  It is sure to turn off one way or the other soon, and if it is too far ahead of us when it does so, then it may give us the slip altogether.”

But the gondola continued its course the whole length of the canal, and then straight on until, nearly opposite Saint Mark’s, it passed close to a larger gondola, with four rowers, coming slowly in the other direction; and it seemed to Francis that the two boats paused when opposite each other, and that a few words were exchanged.

Then the boat they were watching turned out straight into the lagoon.  It was rather lighter here than in the canal, bordered on each side by houses, and Francis did not turn the head of his gondola for a minute or two.

“It will be very difficult to keep them in sight out here without their making us out,” Giuseppi said.