Mathias Sandorf/Page 22

by Jules Verne

CHAPTER VII.
MALTA

And so it was the son of the Rovigno fisherman who had just told his name to Dr. Antekirtt. By a providential chance it was Luiga Ferrato whose courage and ability had saved the yacht and her passengers and crew from certain destruction.

The doctor was going to seize Luigi and clasp him in his arms. He checked himself. It would have been Count Sandorf who would have thus shown his gratitude; and Count Sandorf was dead to everybody, even to the son of Andrea Ferrato.

But if Pierre Bathory was obliged keep the same reserve, and for the same reasons, he was about to forget it when the doctor stopped him by a look. The two went into the saloon, and Luigi was asked to follow.

“My friend,” asked the doctor, “are you the son of an Istrian fisherman, whose name was Andrea Ferrato?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you not a sister?”

“Yes, and we live together at Valetta; but—” he added, with a certain amount of hesitation—“did you know my father?”

“Your father!” answered the doctor. “Your father fifteen years ago gave shelter to two fugitives in his house at Rovigno. Those fugitives were friends of mine whom his devotion was unable to save. But that devotion cost Andrea Ferrato his liberty and his life, for on account of it he was sent to Stein, where he died.”

“Yes, died, but he did not regret what he had done,” said Luigi.

The doctor took the young man's hand.

“Luigi,” said he, “it was to me that my friends gave the task of paying the debt of gratitude they owed your father. For many years I have been seeking to find what had become of your sister and you, but all trace had been lost when you left Rovigno. Thank Heaven you were sent to our assistance! The ship you have saved I named the ‘Ferrato,’ in remembrance of your father, Andrea! Come to my arms, my child!”

While the doctor clasped him to his breast Luigi felt the tears start into his eyes. At this affecting scene Pierre could not remain unmoved. He felt his whole soul go forth toward this young man of his own age, the brave son of the fisherman of Rovigno.

“And I! I!” exclaimed he, with outstretched arms.

“You, sir?”

“I! The son of Stephen Bathory!”

Did the doctor regret the avowal? No! Luigi Ferrato could keep the secret as well as Pescade and Matifou.

Luigi was then informed how matters stood, and learned Dr. Antekirtt's objects. One thing he was not told, and that was that he was in the presence of Count Mathias Sandorf.

The doctor wished to be taken at once to Maria Ferrato. He was impatient to see her again, impatient, above all, to hear how she had lived a life of work and misery since Andrea's death had left her alone, with her brother to look after.

“Yes, doctor,” answered Luigi, “let us go ashore at once! Maria will be very anxious about me! It is forty-eight hours since I left her to go fishing in Melleah Creek, and during last night's storm she will be afraid I have got drowned!”

“You are fond of your sister?” asked the doctor.

“She is my mother and my sister combined,” answered Luigi.

Does the isle of Malta, situated about sixty-two miles from Sicily, belong to Europe or to Africa, from which it is separated by one hundred and sixty miles? This is a question which has much exercised geographers; but, in any case, having been given by Charles V. to the Hospitalers whom Solyman drove out of Rhodes, and who then took the name of Knights of Malta, it now belongs to England—and it would take some trouble to get it away from her. It is about eighteen miles long and ten across. It has Valetta and its suburbs for its capital, besides other towns and villages, such as Citta Vecchia—a sort of sacred town, which was the seat of the bishop at the time of the Knights—Dingzi, Zebbug, Birchircara, etc. Rather fertile in its eastern half, and very barren in its western half, the density of its population toward the east is in striking contrast to that toward the west. In all it contains about a hundred thousand inhabitants. What Nature has done for this island in cutting out of its coast its four or five harbors, the most beautiful in the world, surpasses all that can be imagined. Everywhere water; everywhere points, capes and heights ready to receive fortifications and batteries. The Knights had already made it a difficult place to take, and the English have made it impregnable. No ironclad could hope to force her way in against such an array of guns, which, among others, include two at the water's edge, each of a hundred tons, fully equipped with hydraulic apparatus, and capable of sending a shot weighing seventeen and a half hundredweight a distance of nine and a half miles. A piece of information that may be profitably noted by the powers who regret to see in England's hands this admirable station, commanding the Central Mediterranean, and which could hold the whole British fleet.

Assuredly there are English at Malta. There is a governor lodged in the ancient palace of the Grand Master, there is an admiral to look after the fleet and the harbors, and a garrison of from four to five thousand men; but there are Italians who wish to be considered at home, a floating cosmopolitan population as at Gibraltar, and there are, of course, Maltese.

The Maltese are Africans. In the harbors they work their brightly colored boats, in the streets they drive their vehicles down the wildest slopes, in the markets they deal in fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, making a deafening uproar under the lamp of some small sacred daub. It is said that all the men are alike, copper in color, with black, slightly woolly, hair, with piercing eyes, robust, and of medium height. It seems as though all the women were of the same family, with large eyes and long lashes, dark hair, charming hands, supple figures and skin of a whiteness that the sun cannot touch beneath the “falzetta,” a sort of black silk mantle worn in Tunisian fashion, common to all classes, and which answers at the same time for head-dress, mantle, and even fan.

The Maltese have the mercantile instinct. Everywhere they are found doing a trade. Hard-working, thrifty, economic, industrious, sober, but violent, vindictive and jealous, it is among the lower classes that they are best worth studying. They speak a dialect of which the base is Arabic, the result of the conquest which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, a language animated and picturesque, lending itself easily to metaphor and to poetry. They are good sailors when you can keep them, and bold fishermen familiarized with danger by their frequent storms.

It was in this island that Luigi pursued his calling with as much audacity as if he had been a Maltese, and here he had lived for nearly fifteen years with his sister Maria.

Valetta and its suburbs, we said. There are really six towns on the Grand and Quarantine harbors—Floriana Senglea, Bighi, Burmola, Vittoriosa, Sliema, are hardly suburbs, nor even mere assemblages of houses inhabited by the poorer classes; they are regular cities with sumptuous mansions, hotels and churches, worthy of a capital which boasts some 25,000 inhabitants.

It was at Valetta that the brother and sister lived. It would perhaps be more correct to say “under Valetta,” for it was in a kind of subterranean quarter known as the Manderaggio, the entrance to which is on the Strada San Marco, that they had found a lodging suitable for their slender means; and it was into this hypogeum that Luigi led the doctor as soon as the yacht was moored.

After declining the services of the hundreds of boats that surrounded them, they landed on the quay. Entering by the Marine Gate, and deafened by the pealing and ringing of the bells which hover like a sonorous atmosphere over the Maltese capital, they passed beneath the double-casemated fort, and mounted first a steep slope and then a narrow staircase. Between the high houses with their greenish miradores and niches with lighted lamps they arrived before the Cathedral of St. John, and mingled with a crowd of the noisiest people in the world.

When they had reached the back of this hill, a little lower than the cathedral, they began their descent toward the Quarantine harbor; there in the Strada San Marco they stopped midway before a staircase which went off to the right down into the depths.

The Manderaggio runs along under the ramparts with narrow streets where the sun never shines, high yellow walls irregularly pierced with innumerable holes, which do duty as windows, some of them grated and most of them free. Everywhere round about are flights of steps; leading to veritable sewers, low gate-ways, humid, sordid, like the houses of a Kasbah, miserable court-yards, and gloomy tunnels, hardly worthy of the name of lanes. And at every opening, every breathing-place, on the ruined landings and crumbling footpaths, there gathers a repulsive crowd of old women with faces like sorceresses, mothers dirty and pallid and worn, daughters of all ages in rags and tatters, boys half naked, sickly, wallowing in the filth; beggars with every variety of disease and deformity; men, porters or fisher folk of savage look capable of everything evil, and among this human swarm a phlegmatic policeman, accustomed to the hopeless throng, and not only familiarized, but familiar with it! A true court of miracles, but transported into a strange underwork, the last ramifications of which open on to the curtain walls on the level of the Quarantine harbor, and are swept by the sun and sea breeze.

It was in one of the houses in this Manderaggio, but in the upper portion of it, that Maria and Luigi Ferrato lived in two rooms. The doctor was struck with the poverty of the miserable lodging and also with its neatness. The hand of the careful housekeeper again showed itself, as it had done in the house of the fisherman of Rovigno.

As the doctor entered Maria rose, saying to her brother, “My child! my Luigi!”

Luigi embraced his sister, and introduced his friends.

The doctor related in a few words how Luigi had risked his life to save a ship in distress, and at the same time he mentioned Pierre as the son of Stephen Bathory.

While he spoke Maria looked at him with so much attention and even emotion that he feared for a moment she had recognized him. But it was only a flash that vanished from her eyes almost immediately. After fifteen years how was it possible for her to recognize a man who had only been in her father's house for a few hours?

Andrea Ferrato's daughter was then thirty-three years old. She had always been beautiful, owing to the purity of her features and the bright look of her splendid eyes. The white streaks here and there in her raven hair showed that she had suffered less from the length than from the severity of her life. Age had nothing to do with this precocious grayness, which was due entirely to the fatigues and troubles and griefs she had been through since the death of the fisherman of Rovigno.

“Your future and that of Luigi now belong to us,” said Dr. Antekirtt as he finished his story. “Were not my friends deeply indebted to Andrea Ferrato? You will not object, Maria, to Luigi remaining with us?”

“Sirs!” said Maria, “my brother has only acted as he should have done in going to your help last night, and I thank Heaven that he was inspired with the thought to do so. He is the son of a man who never knew but one thins and that was his duty.”

“And we know only one,” replied the doctor, “and that is to pay a debt of gratitude to the children of him—”

He stopped. Maria looked at him again, and the look seemed to pierce through him. He was afraid he had said too much.

“Maria,” broke in Pierre, “you will not prevent Luigi from being my brother?”

“And you will not refuse to be my daughter?” added the doctor, holding out his hand.

And then Maria told the story of her life since she left Rovigno: how the espionage of the Austrian police rendered her existence insupportable, and how they had come to Malta for Luigi to perfect himself in his trade of a seaman by continuing that of a fisherman; and how for many years they had struggled against misery, their feeble resources being soon exhausted.

But Luigi soon equaled the Maltese in boldness and ability. A wonderful swimmer like them he could almost be compared to that famous Nicolo Pescei, a native of Valetta, who carried dispatches from Naples to Palermo by swimming across the Æolian sea. He was an adept at hunting the curlews and wild pigeons, whose nests have to be sought for among the almost inaccessible caves that border on the sea. He was the boldest of fishermen, and never had the wind kept him ashore when it had been necessary for him to go out to his nets and lines. And it was owing to this that he had been in Melleah Creek when he heard the signals of the yacht in distress.

But at Malta the sea-birds, the fish, the mollusks are so abundant that the moderation of their price makes fishing anything but a lucrative trade. Do all he could, Luigi could hardly manage to supply the wants of the humble home, although Maria contributed something toward it by what she earned from her needle-work. And so they had been obliged to reduce their expenses and take this lodging in the Manderaggio. While Maria was telling her story Luigi went into the other room and came back with a letter in his hand. It was the one Andrea Ferrato had written just before he died:

“Maria,” he said, “take care of your brother. He will soon have only you in the world! For what I have done, my children, I have no regret, unless it is for not having succeeded in saving those who trusted in me, even at the sacrifice of my liberty and my life. What I did I would do again! Never forget your father, who is dying as he sends you this—his last love.

“Andrea Ferrato.”

As he read this Pierre Bathory made no attempt to conceal his emotion, and Dr. Antekirtt turned away his head to avoid Maria's searching look.

“Luigi,” said he, abruptly, “your boat was smashed last night against my yacht—”

“She was an old one, doctor,” answered Luigi, “and for any one but me the loss would not be much.”

“Perhaps so, but you will allow me to give you another for her. I will give you the boat you saved.”

“What?”

“Will you be the mate of the Ferrato? I want a man who is young, active and a good sailor.”

“Accept, Luigi,” said Pierre, “accept!”

“But my sister?”

“Your sister shall become one of the family that lives on my island, of Antekirtta!” replied the doctor. “Your lives henceforth belong to me, and I will do all I can to make them happy, and that the only regret for your past life shall be that of having lost your father.”

Luigi seized the doctor's hands; he clasped them; he kissed them, while Maria could find no other way of showing her gratitude than by bursting into tears.

“To-morrow I expect you on board!” said the doctor.

And if he could no longer master his emotion he hurriedly left, after beckoning Pierre to follow him.

“Ah!” he said, “it is good—it is good to make ammends—”

“Yes, better than to punish!” answered Pierre.

“But it is necessary to punish!”

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPY IN THE MANDERAGGIO.

The next morning the doctor was waiting ready to receive Maria and Luigi Ferrato. Already Captain Kostrik had taken steps to have the engine repaired. Thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Samuel Grech & Co., shipping agents of the Strada Levante, to which the ship had been consigned, the work advanced rapidly. But they required five or six days, for they had to unship the air pump and the condenser, several tubes of which were working badly The delay was very serious to Dr. Antekirtt, who was most anxious to get to the Sicilian coast. And he even thought of sending for the “Savarena,” but it seemed better to wait a few days longer and start for Sicily in a fast and well-armed ship.

However, as a matter of precaution, and in view of eventualities that might arise, he sent a message by submarine cable to Antekirtta, and ordered “Electric No. 2” to cruise off the coast of Sicily near Cape Passaro.

About nine o'clock in the morning a boat came on board with Maria Ferrato and her brother. Both were received by the doctor with the liveliest affection. Luigi was introduced to the captain and crew as the mate, the officer he replaced being transferred to “Electric No. 2.”

With regard to Luigi there could be no mistake; he was a thorough sailor. His courage and boldness were known from the way in which thirty-six hours before he had acted in the Creek of Melleah. He was received with acclamation. Then his friend Pierre and Captain Kostrik did the honors of the ship, which he went round to examine in all her details; while the doctor conversed with Maria and spoke of her brother in a way that deeply affected her.

“Yes!” she said, “he is all his father!”

To the doctor's proposal either for her to remain on board until the end of the projected expedition, or to return direct to Antekirtta, where he offered to take her, Maria asked to be allowed to go with him to Sicily; and it was agreed that she should profit by the stay of the “Ferrato” at Valetta to put her affairs in order, to sell certain things which were only valuable as remembrances, and realize the little she possessed, so as to take up her quarters the day before the yacht left.

The doctor had told her of his plans, and how he was going to persist until he had accomplished them. Part of his plan had been realized, for the children of Andrea Ferrato need now have no anxiety for the future. But to get hold of Toronthal and Sarcany on the one hand, and Carpena on the other, remained to be done, and it would be done. The two former he thought he should meet with in Sicily, the latter he had still to seek.

Thus he told Maria, and when he had finished she asked to speak with him in private.

“What I am going to tell you I have hitherto thought it my duty to keep hidden from my brother. He would not have been able to contain himself; and probably new misfortunes would have come upon us.”

“Luigi is at this moment among the crew forward,” answered the doctor. “Let us go into the saloon and there you can speak without fear of being overheard.”

When the door of the saloon was shut they sat down on one of the benches, and Maria said:

“Carpena is here, doctor.”

“In Malta?”

“Yes, and has been for some days.”

“At Valetta?”

“In the Manderaggio, where we live.”

The doctor was much surprised and pleased.

“You are not mistaken, Maria?”

“No, I am not mistaken. The man's face remains on my memory, and a hundred years might go by, but I would recognize him! He is here!”

“Luigi does not know this?”

“No, doctor; and you understand why I did not tell him. He would have found Carpena—he would have provoked him perhaps—”

“You have done well, Maria! The man belongs to me alone! But you do think he has recognized you?”

“I do not know,” answered Maria. “Two or three times I have met him in the Manderaggio, and he has turned to look after me with a certain suspicious attention. If he has followed me, if he has asked my name, he ought to know who I am.”

“He has never spoken to you?”

“Never.”

“And do you know why he has come to Valetta, and what he has been doing since his arrival?”

“All I can say is that he lives with the most hateful men in the Manderaggio. He hangs about the most suspicious drinking-houses, and associates with the worst of the scoundrels. Money seems to be plentiful with him, and I fancy that he is busy enlisting bandits like himself to take part in some villainous scheme—”

“Here?”

“I do not know.”

“I will know.”

At this moment Pierre entered the saloon followed by the young fisherman, and the interview was at an end.

“Well, Luigi,” asked the doctor, “are you contented with what you have seen?”

“The ‘Ferrato’ is a splendid ship.”

“I am glad you like her,” answered the doctor, “for you will act as her mate until circumstances take place to make you her captain.”

“Oh, sir—!”

“My dear Luigi,” said Pierre, “with Doctor Antekirtt do not forget that all things will come.”

“Yes, all things come, Pierre, but say rather with the help of God.”

Maria and Luigi then took their leave to return to their small lodging. It was arranged that Luigi should commence his duties as soon as his sister had come on board, lt would not do for Maria to remain alone in the Manderaggio, for it was possible that Carpena had recognized the daughter of Andrea Ferrato.

When the brother and sister had gone, the doctor sent for Point Pescade, to whom he wished to speak in Pierre's presence.

Pescade immediately came in, and stood in the attitude of a man ever ready to receive an order and ever ready to execute it.

“Point Pescade,” said the doctor, “I have need of you.”

“Of me and Cape Matifou?”

“Of you alone at present.”

“What am I to do?”

“Go ashore at once to the Manderaggio, and get a lodging in the dirtiest public-house you can find.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then keep your eyes on a man that it is very important we should not lose sight of. But nobody must suspect you know him! If necessary, you can disguise yourself.”

“That is my business.”

“This man, I am told, is trying to buy over some of the chief scoundrels in the Manderaggio. What his object is I do not know, and that is what I want you to find out as soon as possible.”

“I understand.”

“When you have found out, do not return on board, as you may be followed. Put a letter in the post and meet me in the evening at the other end of Senglea. You will find me there.”

“Agreed,” answered Point Pescade; “but how am I to know the man?”

“Oh, that will not be very difficult! You are intelligent, my friend, and I trust to your intelligence.”

“May I know the gentleman's name?”

“His name is Carpena.”

As he heard the name Pierre exclaimed—

“What! the Spaniard here?”

“Yes,” replied the doctor; “and he is living in the very street where we found the children of Andrea Ferrato, whom he sent to prison and to death.”

The doctor told them all that he had heard from Maria. Point Pescade saw how urgent it was for them to clearly understand the Spaniard's game, for he was evidently at work at some dark scheme in the slums of Valetta.

An hour afterward Point Pescade left the yacht. To throw any spy off the track in case he was followed he began by a stroll along the Strada Reale, which runs from Saint Elmo to Floriana, and it was only when evening closed in that he reached Manderaggio.

To get together a band of ruffians ready for either murder or robbery, no better place could be chosen than this sink of corruption. Here were scoundrels of every nation from the rising to the setting of the sun, runaways from merchant ships, deserters from war ships and Maltese of the lowest class, cut-throats in whose veins ran the blood of their pirate ancestors who made themselves so terrible in the razzias of the past.

Carpena was endeavoring to enlist a dozen of these determined villains—who would stick at nothing—and was quite embarrassed in his choice. Since his arrival he had hardly been outside the taverns in the lower streets of the Manderaggio, and Pescade had no difficulty in recognizing him, though he could not easily find out on whose behalf he was acting.

Evidently his money was not his own. The reward of 5,000 florins for his share in the Rovigno matter must have been exhausted long ago. Carpena, driven from Istria by public reprobation, and warned off from all the salt-works along the coast, had set out to see the world. His money soon disappeared, and rascal as he was before, he had become still more of a rascal.

No one would be astonished to find him in the service of a notorious band of malefactors, for whom he recruited to fill the vacancies the halter had caused. It was in this way that he was employed at Malta, and more particularly in the Manderaggio. The place to which he took his recruits Carpena was too mistrustful of his companions to reveal. And they never asked him. Provided he paid them cash down, provided he guaranteed them a future of successful robbery, they would have gone to the world's end—in confidence.

It should be noted that Carpena had been considerably surprised at meeting Maria in the Manderaggio. After an interval of fifteen years he had recognized her at once, as she had recognized him. And he was very anxious to keep her from knowing what he was doing in Valetta.

Point Pescade had therefore to act warily if he wished to discover what the doctor had such interest in learning, and the Spaniard so jealously guarded. However, Carpena was completely circumvented by him. The precocious young bandit who became so intimate with him, who took the lead of all the rascality in the Manderaggio, and boasted to have already such a history that every page of it would bring him the rope in Malta, the guillotine in Italy, and the garrote in Spain, who looked with the deepest contempt at the poltroons whom the very sight of a policeman rendered uneasy, was just the man whom Carpena, a judge in such matters, could fully appreciate!

In this adroit way Point Pescade succeeded in gaining what he wanted, and on the 26th of August the doctor received a word making an appointment for that evening at the end of Senglea.

During the last few days the work had been pushed ahead on board the “Ferrato.” In three days or more the repairs would be finished, and she would be coaled up and ready for sea.

That evening the doctor went to the place named by Pescade. It was a sort of arcade near a circular road at the end of the suburb.

It was eight o'clock. There were about fifty people gathered about the market, which was still in progress.

Dr. Antekirtt was walking up and down among these people—nearly all of them men and women of Maltese birth—when he felt a hand touch his arm.

A frightful scamp, very shabbily dressed, and wearing a battered old hat, presented him with a handkerchief, saying—

“See here what I have just stolen from your excellency! Another time you had better look after your pockets.”

It was Point Pescade, absolutely unrecognizable under his disguise.

“You funny rascal!” said the doctor.

“Funny, yes! Rascal, no!” said Pescade, as the doctor recognized him; and immediately came to the point with—

“Carpena?”

“He is at work collecting a dozen of the biggest ruffians in the Manderaggio.”

“What for?”

“On account of a certain Zirone!”

The Sicilian Zirone, the companion of Sarcany? What connection was there between those scoundrels and Carpena?

As he thought thus the following explanation presented itself to him, and it was the correct one.

The Spaniard's treachery, which had brought about the arrest of the fugitives from Pisino, had not been unknown to Sarcany, who had doubtless sought him out, and, finding him in want, had easily gained him over to be an agent of Zirone's band. Carpena would therefore be the first link in the chain which the doctor could now follow up.

“Do you know what his object is?” he asked of Pescade.

“The gang is in Sicily.”

“In Sicily? Yes! That is it! And particularly—?”

“In the eastern provinces between Syracuse and Catania!”

The trail was evidently recovered.

“How did you obtain that information?”

“From Carpena himself, who has taken me into his friendship, and whom I recommend to your excellency.”

A nod was the doctor's reply.

“You can now return on board and resume a more fashionable costume.”

“No; this is the best for me.”

“And why?”

“Because I have the honor to be a bandit in the gang of the aforesaid Zirone!”

“My friend,” answered the doctor, “be careful! At that game you are risking your life—”

“In your service, doctor,” said Pescade, “and it is my duty to do so.”

“You are a brave lad.”

“Besides, I am rather a knowing one, I fancy, without boasting too much, and I have made up my mind to trap these beggars!”

The doctor saw that in this way the help of Point Pescade might prove very useful. It was in playing this game that the intelligent fellow had gained Carpena's confidence and wormed out his secrets. He had better leave him to go on.

After five minutes the doctor and Point Pescade, not wishing to be surprised together, left each other. Point Pescade, following the wharves of Senglea, took a boat at the end and returned to the Manderaggio.

Before be arrived Dr. Antekirtt was already on board the yacht. There he told Pierre of what had taken place. At the same time he thought it his duty to tell Cape Matifou that his friend had started on a very dangerous enterprise for the common good.

Hercules lifted his head and three times opened and shut his huge hands. Then he was heard to repeat to himself:

“If he has lost a hair of his head when he comes back—yes! a hair of his head—I'll—”

To finish the phrase was too much for Cape Matifou. He had not the gift of making long sentences.