They were to skirt the entire coast of Italy, stopping at Naples and then at Bari, and then make their way up the Adriatic to Trieste.

These stops, Durkin had found, would be brief, and the danger would be small, for the _Laminian_ was primarily known as a freighter, carrying out blue-stone and salt fish, and on her return cruise picking up miscellaneous cargoes of fruit.

So her passenger list, which included, outside of Frank and Durkin, only a consumptive Welsh school-teacher and a broken-down clergyman from Birmingham, who kept always to his cabin, was in danger of no over-close scrutiny, either from the Neapolitan Guardie Municipali on the one hand, or from any private agents of Keenan and Penfield on the other.
Even one short day of unbroken idleness, indeed, seemed to make life over for both Frank and Durkin.

Steeping themselves in that comfortable sense of security, they drew natural and easy breath once more.

They knew it was but a momentary truce, an interregnum of indolence; but it was all they asked for.