As I sat idly on the vessel’s edge and looked down, down into the clear Mediterranean, brilliantly blue as a lake of melted sapphires, I fancied I could see her the Delilah of my life, lying prone on the golden sand, her rich hair floating straightly around her like yellow weed, her hands clinched in the death agony, her laughing lips blue with the piercing chilliness of the washing tide—­ powerless to move or smile again.  She would look well so, I thought--better to my mind than she looked in the arms of her lover last night.  I fell into a train of profound meditation—­a touch on my shoulder startled me.  I looked up, the captain of the brig stood beside me.  He smiled and held out a cigarette.

“The signor will smoke?” he said courteously.

I accepted the little roll of fragrant Havanna half mechanically.

“Why do you call me signor?” I inquired brusquely.  “I am a coral-fisher.”

The little man shrugged his shoulders and bowed deferentially, yet with the smile still dancing gayly in his eyes and dimpling his olive cheeks.

“Oh, certainly!  As the signor pleases—­ma—­” And he ended with another expressive shrug and bow.

I looked at him fixedly.  “What do you mean?” I asked with some sternness.

With that birdlike lightness and swiftness which were part of his manner, the Sicilian skipper bent forward and laid a brown finger on my wrist.

“Scusa, vi prego!  But the hands are not those of a fisher of coral.”

I glanced down at them.  True enough, their smoothness and pliant shape betrayed my disguise—­the gay little captain was sharp-witted enough to note the contrast between them and the rough garb I wore, though no one else with whom I had come in contact had been as keen of observation as he.  At first I was slightly embarrassed by his remark—­but after a moment’s pause I met his gaze frankly, and lighting my cigarette I said, carelessly: 

“Ebbene!  And what then, my friend?”

He made a deprecatory gesture with his hands.

“Nay, nay, nothing—­but only this.  The signor must understand he is perfectly safe with me.  My tongue is discreet—­I talk of things only that concern myself.  The signor has good reasons for what he does—­ of that I am sure.  He has suffered; it is enough to look in his face to see that.  Ah, Dio if there are so many sorrows in life; there is love,” he enumerated rapidly on his fingers—­“there is revenge—­ there are quarrels—­there is loss of money; any of these will drive a man from place to place at all hours and in all weathers.  Yes; it is so, indeed—­I know it!  The signor has trusted himself in my boat--I desire to assure him of my best services.”