“Boom!” they repeated, in derisive chorus.

At that moment all the occupants of the boat pricked up their ears.  A sound had reached them, a similar sound—­a sound that recalled the distant firing of a big gun.  Boom!  It reverberated among the rocks.  The rowers dropped their oars.  Everyone listened.

The sound came again.  This time there was no question as to its origin.  It was artillery, beyond a doubt.

The old sailor had grown preternaturally grave.

“IL Cannone Del Duca,” he said.

The cannon of the Good Duke Alfred, never used save on urgent or solemn occasions, was being discharged.

Then the boatman made another remark, in Italian, to Keith.

“What does he say?” asked Mr. Heard.

“He thinks they must be calling out the militia.”

Something was very wrong, up yonder, on the market-place.

CHAPTER XIX

The cannon, to be hereinafter described, is not the sole surviving relic of the Good Duke’s rule.  Turn where you please on this island domain, memories of that charming and incisive personality will meet your eye and ear; memories in stone-schools, convents, decayed castles and bathing chalets; memories in the spoken word—­proverbs attributed to him, legends and traditions of his sagacity that still linger among the populace.  In the days of the Duke:  so runs a local saying, much as we speak of the “good old times.”  His amiable laughter-loving ghost pervades the capital to this hour.  His pleasantries still resound among those crumbling theatres and galleries.  That gleeful deviltry of his, compounded of blood and sunshine, is the epitome of Nepenthe.  He is the scarlet thread running through its annals.  An incarnation of all that was best in the age he identified, for wellnigh half a century, his interests with those of his faithful subjects.

He meditated no conquests.  It sufficed him to gain and to retain the affection of men in whose eyes he was not so much a prince, a feudal lord, as an indulgent and doting father.  He was the ideal despot, a man of wide culture and simple tastes.  “A smile,” he used to say, “will sway the Universe.”  Simplicity he declared to be the keynote of his nature, the guiding motive of his governance.  In exemplification whereof he would point to his method of collecting taxes—­a marvel of simplicity.  Each citizen paid what he liked.  If the sum proved insufficient he was apprised of the fact next morning by having his left hand amputated; a second error of judgment—­it happened rather seldom—­was rectified by the mutilation of the remaining member.  “Never argue with inferiors,” was one of His Highness’s most original and pregnant remarks, and it was observed that, whether he condescended to argue or not, he generally gained his point without undue loss of time.