Now, make haste all of you, or it will be the worse for you." It was useless hesitating.

The captain, Francis, and the crew stepped on board the galley.
"Just look round her," the captain said to one of his sailors.

"If there is anything worth taking, take it, and then knock a hole in her bottom with your axe." Francis, as he stepped on board the galley, looked round at the crew.
They were not Genoese, as he had expected, but a mixture of ruffians from all the ports in the Mediterranean, as he saw at once by their costumes.

Some were Greeks from the islands, some Smyrniots, Moors, and Spaniards; but the Moors predominated, nearly half the crew belonging to that race.
Then he looked at the captain, who was eagerly perusing the documents the captain had handed him.

As his eye fell upon him, Francis started, for he recognized at once the man whose designs he had twice thwarted, Ruggiero Mocenigo, and felt that he was in deadly peril.
After reading the merchant's communication to his agent, Ruggiero opened the letter addressed to Maria.