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Giaccomo, who did not hurry, came in behind them with the valise. It was now past eleven o'clock; and seeing that the young priest looked tired, and realising that he must be hungry after such a journey, Victorine offered to have some breakfast served at once in the sitting-room. He would then have the afternoon to rest or go out, and would only meet the ladies in the evening at dinner.
She was evidently making much better weather of it than we were; but on the other hand half-an-hour's patient observation revealed to us the comforting fact that, notwithstanding her vaunted speed, we were both head-reaching and weathering upon her. Satisfied at length that this was actually the case, I asked Giaccomo what he now thought of our chances of escape.
Her performance perfectly enchanted me; I had never seen anything like it before, and to my unaccustomed eyes she seemed fairly to fly. Even Giaccomo and Francois, both of whom had repeatedly sailed in her, asserted that they had never seen her do so well before.
He also hunted out Giaccomo who looked a smart honest fellow enough and ordered him to go with the horses to the grotto, holding himself in readiness for a lengthened journey at a moment's notice, and that he was to understand he was under my immediate orders, to do whatever I might require of him.
Giaccomo and his shipmate, or prisoner whichever the reader likes were somewhere forward, probably sitting down; but it was impossible to see them in the impenetrable darkness. I called Giaccomo aft, and his voice, when he spoke in reply, sounded strange, weird, and unnatural.
After the setting of the moon we had lost sight of the guarda-costa until dawn once more betrayed her whereabouts. When first seen she was hull-down and about three points on our lee quarter, still under her two lugs and jib. So far, this was satisfactory; we had walked fairly away from her in her own weather, and Giaccomo was in ecstasies.
By her advice he dined, partaking of some soup, a wing of a chicken, and some preserves, which Giaccomo, the big lackey, brought up to him. And the food did him a great deal of good; he felt so restored that he refused to go to bed, desiring, said he, to thank the ladies that very evening for their kindly hospitality. As Donna Serafina received on Mondays he would present himself before her.
At the mere suggestion of resting, however, Pierre began to protest, declaring that he should certainly go out, not wishing to lose an entire afternoon. The breakfast he readily accepted, for he was indeed dying of hunger. However, he had to wait another full half hour. Giaccomo, who served him under Victorine's orders, did everything in a most leisurely way.
Giaccomo had done the same, while Francois was standing on the side of the cabin-companion, and clinging convulsively with both hands to the weather-rail. Crawling up to the side of the Corsican, I placed my mouth to his ear and shouted, "Do you think you can cut away the mast?" "No! no! no!" he earnestly returned.
Mooring the boat alongside we accordingly crept softly on board, and Giaccomo immediately descended into the little forecastle to ascertain whether any one happened to be on board.