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Updated: June 25, 2025
Had I but heeded her counsels I should never have been what I now am." "I can readily believe that," said I, "little as I know of my mother. But do you intend me to accept that remark as literally true, or " "It is literally true," answered Merlani.
The surgeon further informed me that Merlani for he it really proved to be had manifested quite an extraordinary inquisitiveness respecting me, and had at last requested that I might be informed he would like to speak to me.
This mention of Courtenay afforded me a very good opportunity to ask if anything further had been seen or heard of Merlani and his schooner; in reply to which the admiral assured me that, though my gallant young shipmate had most assiduously sought the pirate, nothing further had been seen of him; and it was thought that, disheartened by the destruction of his stronghold, he had left that part of the world altogether.
"Ay was she," replied Merlani. "Her mother died half an hour after giving her birth; and my mother who was at that time nursing my sister Bianca, now dead, woe is me! was summoned in all haste to the chateau to take the place of a mother to the new-born infant.
I found them in the saloon under the poop, with four prisoners who had been discovered ransacking the cabins, and in one of these prisoners, a fine handsome middle-aged man of swarthy complexion, with dark hair clustering in close ringlets all over his shapely head, dark piercing eyes, small ears, from the lobes of which depended a pair of plain gold ear-rings, and a somewhat slim yet wiry and athletic-looking figure clad in a picturesque but somewhat showy costume, I thought I identified the man I was so anxious to meet, Giuseppe Merlani.
It was further discovered that there were three feluccas one large three-masted craft and two small one-masters, surmised to be our recent acquaintances of the Cristo Cays lying in the anchorage, with springs on their cables and apparently all ready for immediate action; but the schooner which we saw on our last visit was now absent, and Merlani presumably with her.
At length, after so prolonged a visit that he was surprised by the rising moon, and his features thus more fully revealed to me, I identified your mother's visitor as a young fellow named Giuseppe Merlani, whom why, what is the matter, Leo? Why do you look at me like that? One would swear you had seen a ghost! What is it, my boy?"
As soon, therefore, as I found myself at liberty, I, without delaying even to wait upon Don Luis and Inez, made my way below to the sick-bay, where, in a little corner which had been separated by a screen from the part occupied by the other injured men, lay Merlani in a hammock, with one of my men to attend upon and at the same time stand sentry over him.
"So, then, you and my mother were friends?" I remarked, in the hope of leading him on to talk further upon the subject. "Friends!" ejaculated Merlani; "well, yes, we were; but that expression is hardly the right one. She was the guardian angel; I the poor, weak, erring mortal over whom she watched.
I was especially particular in my questions respecting the man Merlani; and though my father was unable to tell me much about him, the little I learned sufficed me to arrive at the conclusion that our friend the hero of the Conconil lagoons might, after all, turn out to be the same individual.
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