When a craft like mine has a sail spread on each side, resembling a bird, we say, in English, that she marches 'Ving-and-Ving,'" Andrea Barrofaldi mused, in silence, near a minute.

During this interval, he was thinking of the improbability of any but a bona-fide Englishman's dreaming of giving a vessel an appellation so thoroughly idiomatic, and was fast mystifying himself, as so often happens by tyros in any particular branch of knowledge, by his own critical acumen.

Then he half whispered a conjecture on the subject to Vito Viti, influenced quite as much by a desire to show his neighbor his own readiness in such matters, as by any other feeling.

The podesta was less struck by the distinction than his superior; but, as became one of his limited means, he did not venture an objection.
"Signor Capitano," resumed Andrea Barrofaldi, "since when have you English adopted the rig of the lugger?
It is an unusual craft for so great a naval nation, they tell me." "Bah! I see how it is, Signor Vice-governatore--you suspect me of being a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or something else than I claim to be.

On this head, however, you may set your heart at rest, and put full faith in what I tell you.