As for knowing a lugger from a felucca, it is as easy as to know a house from a church, or one of the reverend padri, in the streets, from a mariner." "Aye, so I would have told 'Maso on the spot, had the obstinate old fellow been inclined to hear me.

The distance is just about what you say; and nothing is easier than to see that the stranger is a lugger.

As to the nation--" "That may not be so easily told, Signore, unless the vessel show us her nag." "By San Antonio! thou art right, child; and it is fitting she should show us her flag.

Nothing has a right to approach so near the port of his Imperial and Royal Highness, that does not show its flag, thereby declaring its honest purpose and its nation.

My friends, are the guns in the battery loaded as usual ?" The answer being in the affirmative, there was a hurried consultation among some of the principal men in the crowd, and then the podesta walked toward the government-house with an important air.