‘Pity,’ said Philip, ‘we might have given him a lift. But perhaps he has a launch?’

‘I don’t think he’s using his launch now, sir.’

‘Oh well, he’ll find some way of getting there, you may be sure,’ said Dickie. ‘How shall we know him, Giuseppe?’

‘I expect you’ll see him double, my poor Dickie,’ remarked his friend.

The barman, with his usual courtesy, began replying to Dickie’s question.

‘Oh, he’s a common-looking gentleman like yourself, sir. . . .’

‘I, common?’

‘No,’ said the barman, confused. ‘I mean grande come lei—as tall as you.’

‘That’s nothing to go by. Has he a beard and whiskers and a moustache?’

‘No, he’s clean-shaven.’

‘Come on, come on,’ said Philip. ‘We shall be late, and perhaps he won’t wait for us.’

But his friend was in combative mood. ‘Damn it! how are we to dine with the chap if we don’t recognize him? Now, Giuseppe, hurry up; think of the Duce and set your great Italian mind working. Isn’t there anything odd about him? Is he cross-eyed?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Does he wear spectacles?’

‘Oh no, sir.’

‘Is he minus an arm?’

‘Nossignore,’ cried the barman, more and more agitated.

‘Can’t you tell us anything about him, except that he’s common-looking, like me?’

The barman glanced helplessly round the room. Suddenly his face brightened. ‘Ah, ecco! He limps a little.’

‘That’s better,’ said Dickie. ‘Come on, Philip, you lazy hound, you always keep me waiting.’ He got down from the stool. ‘See you later,’ he said over his shoulder to the barman. ‘Mind you have the whisky pronto. I shall need it after this trip.’

The barman, gradually recovering his composure, gazed after Dickie’s receding, slightly lurching figure with intense respect.

The gondola glided smoothly over the water towards the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the slender campanile of which was orange with the light of the setting sun. On the left lay the Piazzetta, the two columns, the rich intricate stonework of St. Mark’s, the immense façade of the Ducal Palace, still perfectly distinct for all the pearly pallor in the air about them. But, as San Giorgio began to slide past them on the right, it was the view at the back of the gondola which engrossed Philip’s attention. There, in the entrance of the Grand Canal, the atmosphere was deepening into violet while the sky around the dome of the Salute was of that clear deep blue which, one knows instinctively, may at any moment be pierced by the first star. Philip, who was sitting on his companion’s left, kept twisting round to see the view, and the gondolier, whose figure blocked it to some extent, smiled each time he did so, saying ‘Bello, non è vero?’ almost as though from habit. Dickie, however, was less tolerant of his friend’s æsthetic preoccupations.

‘I wish to goodness you wouldn’t keep wriggling about,’ he muttered, sprawling laxly in the depths of the more comfortable seat. ‘You make me feel seasick.’

‘All right, old chap,’ said Philip, soothingly. ‘You go to sleep.’

Dickie hauled himself up by the silk rope which was supported by the brass silhouette of a horse at one end and by a small but solid brass lion at the other.

He said combatively: ‘I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to know what we’re to say to this sugar-refining friend of yours. Supposing he doesn’t talk English? Shall we sit silent through the meal?’

‘Oh, I think all foreigners do.’ Philip spoke lightly; his reply was directed to the first of Dickie’s questions; it would have been obviously untrue as an answer to the second. ‘Jackson didn’t tell me; he only gave me that letter and said he was a nice fellow and could get us into palaces and so on that ordinary people don’t see.’

‘There are too many that ordinary people do see, as it is, if you ask me,’ groaned Dickie. ‘For God’s sake don’t let him show us any more sights.’

‘He seems to be a well-known character,’ said Philip. ‘He’ll count as a sight himself.’

‘If you call a limping dago a sight, I’m inclined to agree with you,’ Dickie took him up crossly.

But Philip was unruffled.

‘I’m sorry, Dickie, but I had to do it—couldn’t ignore the letter, you know. We shall get through the evening somehow. Now, sit up and look at the lovely scenery. Cosa è questa isola?’ he asked the gondolier, indicating an island to the right that looked if it might be a monastery.

‘Il manicomio,’ said the gondolier, with a grin. Then, as Philip looked uncomprehending, he tapped his forehead and smiled still more broadly.

‘Oh,’ said Philip, ‘it’s the lunatic asylum.’

‘I do wish,’ said Dickie, plaintively, ‘if you must show me things, you’d direct my attention to something more cheerful.’

‘Well, then,’ said Philip, ‘look at these jolly old boats. They’re more in your line.’

A couple of tramp-steamers, moored stern to stern, and, even in the fading twilight, visibly out of repair—great gangrenous patches of rust extending over their flanks—hove up on the left. Under the shadow of their steep sides the water looked oily and almost black.

Dickie suddenly became animated. ‘This reminds me of Hull,’ he exclaimed. ‘Good old Hull! Civilization at last! Nothing picturesque and old-world. Two ugly useful old ships, nice oily water and lots of foreign bodies floating about in it. At least,’ he said, rising unsteadily to his feet, ‘I take that to be a foreign body.’

‘Signore, signore!’ cried the first gondolier, warningly.

A slight swell, caused perhaps by some distant motor-boat, made the gondola rock alarmingly. Dickie subsided—fortunately, into his seat; but his hand was still stretched out, pointing, and as the water was suddenly scooped into a hollow, they all saw what he meant: a dark object showed up for an instant in the trough of the wave.

‘Looks like an old boot,’ said Philip, straining his eyes. ‘Cosa è, Angelino?’

The gondolier shrugged his shoulders.

‘Io non so. Forse qualche gatto,’ he said, with the light-heartedness with which Italians are wont to treat the death of animals.

‘Good God, does the fellow think I don’t know a cat when I see one?’ cried Dickie, who had tumbled to the gondolier’s meaning. ‘Unless it’s a cat that has been in the water a damned long time. No, it’s—it’s . . .’

The gondoliers exchanged glances and, as though by mutual consent, straightened themselves to row. ‘E meglio andare, signori,’ said Angelino firmly.

‘What does he say?’

‘He says we’d better be going.’

‘I’m not going till I’ve found out what that is,’ said Dickie obstinately. ‘Tell him to row up to it, Phil.’

Philip gave the order, but Angelino seemed not to understand.

‘Non e niente interesssante, niente interessante,’ he kept repeating stubbornly.

‘But it is interesting to me,’ said Dickie, who like many people could understand a foreign language directly his own wishes were involved. ‘Go to it! There!’ he commanded.

Reluctantly the men set themselves to row. As the boat drew up alongside, the black patch slid under the water and there appeared in its place a gleam of whiteness, then features—a forehead, a nose, a mouth. . . . They constituted a face, but not a recognizable one.

‘Ah, povero annegato,’ murmured Angelino, and crossed himself.

The two friends looked at each other blankly.

‘Well, this has torn it,’ said Dickie, at last. ‘What are we going to do now?’

The gondoliers had already decided. They were moving on.

‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Philip. ‘We can’t leave him like this.’ He appealed to the men. ‘Non si può lasciarlo cosi.’

Angelino spread his hands in protest. The drowned man would be found by those whose business it was to patrol the waters. Who knew what he had died of? Perhaps some dreadful disease which the signori would catch. There would be difficulties with the police; official visits. Finally, as the Englishmen still seemed unconvinced, he added, ‘Anche fa sporca la gondola. Questo tappeto, signori, m’ha costato più che mille duecento lire.’