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Updated: June 28, 2025
"How did you find this out?" asked Aristarchi on the floor beside her, and reaching down into the dark space to explore it with his hand. "It is deep," he continued, without waiting for an answer. "There may be some passage by which one can get down." "Only a child could pass. You see how narrow it is. But one can hear every sound. They said enough to-night to send them all to the scaffold."
I can take a message to him, but I am not sure that he will see any one to-day." Aristarchi imagined that Beroviero made himself inaccessible, in order to increase the general idea of his wealth and importance. He resolved to convey a strong impression of his own standing. "I am the chief partner in a great house of Greek merchants settled in Palermo," he said.
"Were you ever a pirate?" he inquired presently. "No, I never served in your crew." The porter was not often at a loss for a surly answer. The Greek laughed outright, in genuine amusement. "I like your company, my friend," he said. "I should like to spend the day here." "As the devil said to Saint Anthony," concluded the porter. Aristarchi laughed again.
There were small objects of gold and silver on the tables in the large room, there was a dagger with a jewelled hilt, an illuminated mass book in a chased silver case. "You will need it on Sundays at sea," said Aristarchi. "I cannot read," said the Georgian slave regretfully. "But it will be a consolation to have the missal." Aristarchi smiled and tossed the book upon the heap of things.
The order to leave Venice had come an hour later. The anchors were now up, and the vessel was riding to a kedge by a light hawser, well out in the channel. As soon as Arisa could be brought on board Aristarchi meant to make sail, for the strong offshore breeze would blow all night. "We may as well leave nothing behind," said Aristarchi coolly.
"Oh, I hoped you would," answered the Georgian woman. "I have hated him so long. Will you not kill him, just to please me? We could wind him in a sheet with a weight, you know, and drop him into the canal, and no one would ever know. I have often thought of it." "Have you, my gentle little sweetheart?" Aristarchi chuckled with delight as he stroked her hair. "I am sorry," he continued.
Pasquale snarled and showed his teeth at the mere idea, for his instinct told him that Aristarchi was a pirate, or had been one, and he was by no means sure that the Greek had carried off Zorzi for any good purpose. "Pasquale," said Beroviero, "it is long since you have had a holiday. Take the skiff to-morrow morning, and go over to Venice.
"They will say nothing more to-night," whispered Arisa. "They will play for hours." "They had not said a word that could put their necks in danger," answered Aristarchi discontentedly. "Who is this fellow from the glass-house, of whom they were speaking?" Arisa led him away to a small divan between the open windows.
If the old man could have had vision of Jacopo's life, and could have suddenly known what the beautiful woman in black was to the patrician, Contarini's chance of going home alive that day would have been small indeed, for Beroviero might have strangled him where he stood, and perhaps Aristarchi would have discreetly turned his back while he was doing it.
Her eyelids drooped, and her cheeks grew deadly white, and the strong man felt the furious beating of her heart against his own breast. He was Aristarchi, the Greek captain who had sold her for a slave, and she loved him. In the wild days of sea-fighting among the Greek islands he had taken a small trading galley that had been driven out of her course.
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