Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/330

 and tried again—feeling my eyelids becoming heavier with each number I told. The footsteps of the guard holding watch under the colonnade fell ever duller and fainter on my ears. Now and then one of the pigeons from the Place of St. Mark whirred past over my head, hastening to seek refuge from the glowing heat under the eaves of the church. It was so still, that I could hear the little wavelets as they broke against the bows of the gondolas. All the world was having its siesta, and I was in a good way to follow suit, when the shout, 'Hi! Antonello, up there! A league's row on the canal!' startled me out of my doze.

"The shout proceeded from Count Orazio Memmo—the most amiable good-for-nothing in all Venice. Three-and-twenty years old, tall and slim, a well-cut pale face, with the blackest and most brilliant eyes in the world; as clever as daring, as rich as generous, a bold gamester, a passionate worshipper of women—such was my patron.

"Mistrustful of the gondoliers of his uncle, the Councillor, in whom, not without ground, he suspected spies on his goings and comings, the young gallant needed on his adventures a quick-witted, fearless fellow, a silent, perfectly reliable assistant—and in me he had found his man. Ah, when I think of those old wild times, those brilliant Carnivals, those nightly revelries and serenades, those mysterious rendezvous in the gardens of the Giudecca! Fathers and lovers cursed Orazio Memmo worse than the Grand Turk, and many a handful of silver coin has poured into my cap when my swift gondola has distanced the enraged pursuer, and I have landed the happy lover, undiscovered, on the marble steps of the Casa Memmo.

"Quick as thought did I spring to my legs at the sound of the well-known voice, then loosed the chain from the stake, and when his Excellency had seated himself on the luxurious cushions, pushed off vigorously from the land.

"The boat may have been gliding gently over the water for about a half-hour. Inaudibly fell the oar into the green waves—but there was no hurry, and my patron had no aim but to dream away an hour in dolce far niente. Presently, however, a foreign gondola rushed up with hasty strokes of the oars behind us, and then shot quickly past. The deck was covered with a silver carpet streaked in red, and the heavy silk tassels that hung from the gunwales trailed along the surface of the water. The two rowers were clothed in a rich stuff of the same design. In front of the cabin sat on a brocaded cushion a Moorish boy, with a broad golden neck-band, a dagger hanging from glittering chains by his side, and balanc-