fell in with off the harbour here," answered Cuffe when this speech was translated to him; "and I don't wonder at it, for the two vessels were surprisingly alike. But the barone we saw burned with our own eyes, Griffin, can never float again. I say barone; for in my opinion the Few-Folly was just as much of a rascal as her commander and all who sailed in her." Griffin explained this, but it met with no favour from the two Italians. "Not so, Signor Tenente - not so," returned the vice-governor; "the lugger that passed this morning we know to be Le Feu-Follet, inasmuch as she took one of our own feluccas, in the course of the night, coming from Livorno, and Raoul Yvard permitted her to come in, as he said to her padrone, on account of the civil treatment he had received while lying in our port. Nay, he even carried his presumption so far as to send me, by means of the same man, the compliments of 'Sir Smees,' and his hopes of being able some day to make his acknowledgments in person." The English captain received this intelligence as might be expected; and unpleasant as it was, after putting various questions to the vice-governor and receiving the answers, he was obliged unwillingly enough to believe it all. He had brought his official report in his pocket, and, as the conversation proceeded, he covertly tore it into fragments so small, that even a Mahommedan would reject them as not large enough to write the word "Allah" on. "It 's d-d lucky, Griffin, that letter didn't get to Leghorn this morning," said he, after a long pause. “Nelson would have Bronté'd me famously had he got it! Yet I never believed half so devoutly in the twenty-nine articles as -" "I believe there are thirty-nine of them, Captain Cuffe," modestly put in Griffin. "Well, thirty-nine, if you will - what signifies ten more or less in such matters? A man is ordered to believe them all, if there were a hundred. But I never believed in them so devoutly as I believed in the destruction of that infernal picaroon. My faith is unsettled for life!" Griffin offered a few words of condolence, but he was also too much mortified to be very able to administer consolation. Andrea Barrofaldi, understanding the state of the case, now interposed with his courtesies, and the two officers were invited to share his bachelor's breakfast. What followed in consequence of this visit, and the communications to which it gave rise, will appear in the course of the narrative. CHAPTER XIII. If ever you have looked on better days, If ever been where bells have knolled to church. If ever sat at any good man's feast; SHAKSPEARE. Ir is now necessary to advance the time, and to transfer the scene of our tale to another, but not a distant, part of the same sea. Let the reader fancy himself standing at the mouth of a large bay, of some sixteen or eighteen miles in diameter in nearly every direction; though the shores must be indented with advancing promontories and receding curvatures, while the depth of the whole might possibly a little exceed the greatest width. He will then occupy the spot at which we wish to present to him one of the fairest panoramas of earth. On his right stands a high, rocky island, of dark tufa, rendered gay, amid all its magnificent formations, by smiling vineyards and teeming villages, and interesting by ruins which commemorate events as remote as the Cæsars. A narrow passage of the blue Mediterranean separates this island from a bold cape on the main, whence follows a succession of picturesque, village-clad heights and valleys, relieved by scenery equally bold and soft, and adorned by the monkish habitations called, in the language of the country, Camaldolis, until we reach a small city which stands on a plain which rises above the water between one and two hundred feet, on a base of tufa, and the houses of which extend to the very verge of the dizzy cliffs which limit its extent on the north. The plain itself is like a hive, with its dwellings and scenes of life, while the heights behind it teem with cottages and the signs of human labour. Quitting this smiling part of the coast, we reach a point, always following the circuit of the bay, where the hills or heights tower into ragged mountains which stretch their pointed peaks upwards to some six or seven thousand feet towards the clouds, having sides now wild with precipices and ravines, now picturesque with shootingtowers, hamlets, monasteries and bridle-paths; and bases dotted, or rather lined, with towns and villages. Here the mountainformation quits the margin of the bay, following the coast southward, or running into the interior of the country; and the shore, sweeping round to the north and west, offers a glimpse into a back-ground of broad plain, ere it meets a high, insulated, conical mountain, which properly forms the head of the coast indentation. The human eye never beheld a more affluent scene of houses, cities, villages, vineyards, and country residences, than was presented by the broad breast of this isolated mountain; passing which, a wider view is obtained of the rich plain that seems to lie behind it, bounded as it is by a wall of a distant and mysterious-looking, yet bold, range of the Apennines. Returning to the shore, which now begins to incline more westwardly, we come to another swell of tufa, which has all the characteristic fertility and abruptness of that peculiar formation, a vast and populous town of nearly half a million of souls being seated, in nearly equal parts, on the limits of the plain and along the margin of the water, or on the hill-sides, climbing to their summits. From this point, the northern side of the bay is a confused mass of villages, villas, ruins, palaces and vines, until we reach its extremity - a low promontory, like its opposite neighbour. A small island comes next, a sort of natural sentinel; then the coast sweeps northward into another and a smaller bay, rich to satiety with relics of the past, terminating at a point some miles farther seaward, with a high, reddish, sandy bluff which almost claims to be a mountain. After this we see two more islands lying westward; one of which is flat, fertile and more populous, as is said, than any other part of Europe of the same extent; while the other is a glorious combination of pointed mountains, thronged towns, fertile valleys, castles, country-houses, and the wrecks of longdormant volcanoes, thrown together in a grand yet winning confusion. If the reader will add to this description a shore which has scarce a foot that is not interesting on account of some lore of the past, extending from yesterday into the darkest recesses of history, give life to the water-view with a fleet of little latinerigged craft, rendered more picturesque by an occasional ship, dot the bay with countless boats of fishermen, and send up a wreath of smoke from the summit of the cone-like mountain that forms the head of the bay, he will get an outline of all that strikes the eye as the stranger approaches Naples from the sea. The zephyr was again blowing, and the daily fleet of sparanaras, or undecked feluccas, which passes every morning, at this season, from the south shore to the capital, and returns at this hour, was stretching out from under Vesuvius; some looking up as high as Massa; others heading towards Sorrento, or Vico, or Persano, and many keeping more before the wind towards Castel a Mare, or the landings in that neighbourhood. The breeze was becoming so fresh that the fishermen were beginning to pull in towards the land, breaking up their lines which, in some places, had extended nearly a league, and this, too, with the boats lying within speaking distance of each other. The head of the bay, indeed, was alive with craft, moving in different directions, while a large fleet of English, Russians, Neapolitans, and Turks, composed of two-deckers, frigates and sloops, lay at their anchors, in front of the town. On board of one of the largest of the former was flying the flag of a rear-admiral at the mizzen, the symbol of the commander's rank. A corvette alone was under-way. She had left the anchorage an hour before, and, with studding-sails on her starboard side, was stretching diagonally across the glorious bay, apparently heading towards the passage between Capri and the Point of Campanella, bound to Sicily. This ship might easily have weathered the island; but her commander, an easy sort of person, chose to make a fair wind of it from the start, and he thought, by hugging the coast, he might possibly benefit by the land-breeze during the night, trusting to the zephyr then blowing to carry him across the Gulf of Salerno. A frigate, too, shot out of the fleet, under her staysails, as soon as the westerly wind made; but she had dropped an anchor under-foot, and seemed to wait some preparation, or orders, before taking her departure; her captain being at that moment on board the flagship, on duty with the rear-admiral. This was the Proserpine, thirty-six, Captain Cuffe, a vessel and an officer that are already both acquaintances of the reader. About an hour before the present scene opens, Captain Cuffe in fact had been called on board the Foudroyant by signal, where he had found a small, sallowlooking, slightly-built man, with his right arm wanting, pacing the deck of the fore-cabin, impatient for his appearance. "Well, Cuffe," said this uninviting-looking personage, twitching the stump of the maimed arm, "I see you are out of the flock; are you all ready for sailing?" "We have one boat ashore, after letters, my lord; as soon as she comes off we shall lift our anchor, which is only under-foot." "Very well: I have sent the Ringdove to the southward on the same errand, and I see she is half-a-league from the anchorage on her way already. This Mr. Griffin appears to be a fine young man I like his account of the way he handled his fire-ship; though the French scoundrel did contrive to escape! After all, this Rowl E-E-how do you pronounce the fellow's name, Cuffe? 1 never can make anything out of their gibberish.” "Why, to own the truth, Sir Horatio - I beg pardon - my lord - there is something in the English grain of my feelings which would prevent my ever learning French had I been born and brought up in Paris. There is too much Saxon in me to swallow words which half the time have no meaning." "I like you all the better for that, Cuffe," answered the admiral, smiling, a change that converted a countenance almost ugly when in a state of rest, into one which was almost handsome a peculiarity by no means of rare occurrence when a strong will gives the expression to the features, and the heart at bottom is really sound. "An Englishman has no business with any Gallic tendencies. This young Mr. Griffin seems to have spirit; and I look upon it always as a good sign, when a young man volunteers for a desperate thing of this sort but, he tells me, that he is only second; where was your first all the while?" |