were visible even to their feet. The unfortunate Caraccioli, as has been said, had nearly numbered his three-score-and-ten years in the regular course of nature; and his bare head now showed the traces of time. He wore no coat; and his arms were bound behind his back at the elbows, leaving just motion enough to the hands to aid him in the slighter offices about his own person. His neck was bare, and the fatal cord was tightened sufficiently around it, to prevent accidents, constantly admonishing its victim of its revolting office. A low murmur arose among the people in the boats, as this spectacle presented itself to their eyes; and many bowed their faces in prayer. The condemned man caught a ray of consolation from this expression of sympathy; and he looked around him an instant, with something like a return of those feelings of the world, which it had been his effort and his desire totally to eradicate since he had taken leave of Ghita, and learned that his last request that of changing his mode of punishment had been denied. That was a fearful moment for one like Don Francesco Caraccioli, who had passed a long life in the midst of the scene which surrounded him illustrious by birth, affluent, honoured for his services, and accustomed to respect and deference. Never had the glorious panorama of the bay appeared more lovely than it did at that instant, when he was about to quit it for ever, and this by means of a violent and disgraceful death. From the purple mountains the cerulean void above him - the blue waters over which he seemed already to be suspended and the basking shores, rich in their towns, villas and vines, his eye turned toward the world of ships, each alive with its masses of living men. A glance of melancholy reproach was cast upon the little flag which was just waving at the mizzen-mast-head of the Foudroyant; and then it fell on the carpet of faces beneath, which seemed fairly to change the surface of the smooth sea into an arena of human countenances. His look was steady, though his soul was in a tumult. Ghita was recognised by her companion, and by her dress. He moved towards the edge of his narrow scaffolding, endeavoured to stretch forth his arms, and blessed her, again, aloud. The poor girl dropped on her knees in the bottom of the boat, bowed her head, and in that humble attitude did she remain until all was over; not daring once to look upward again. "Son," said the priest, "this is a moment when the earth, and its feelings, must be forgotten." "I know it, father," answered the old man, his voice trembling with emotion, for his sensations were too powerful, too sublime, even, for the degrading passion of fear; "but never before did this fair piece of the creation seem so lovely in my eyes as now, when I am about to quit it for the last time." "Look beyond this scene, into the long vista of eternity, son; there thou wilt behold that which mocks at all human, all earthly means to equal. I fear that our time is but short; hast thou aught yet to say in the flesh?" "Let it be known, holy priest, that in my dying moment I prayed for Nelson, and for all who have been active in bringing me to this end. It is easy for the fortunate, and the untempted, to condemn; but he is wiser, as he is safer, who puts more reliance on the goodness of God than on his own merits." A ray of satisfaction gleamed athwart the pale countenance of the priest a sincerely pious man, or fear of personal consequences might have kept him aloof from such a scene - and he closed his eyes while he expressed his gratitude to God in the secret recesses of his own spirit. Then he turned to the prince and spoke cheeringly. "Son," said he, "if thou quittest life with a due dependence on the Son of God, and in this temper towards thy fellow-creatures, of all this living throng thou art he who is most to be envied! Address thy soul in prayer, once more to Him whom thou feelest can alone serve thee." Caraccioli, aided by the priest, knelt on the scaffold; for the rope hung loose enough to permit that act of humiliation, and the other bent at his side. "I wish to God Nelson had nothing to do with this!" muttered Cuffe, as he turned away his face, inadvertently bending his eyes on the Foudroyant, nearly under the stern of which ship his gig lay. There, in the stern-walk, stood the lady, already mentioned in this chapter, a keen spectator of the awful scene. No one but a maid was near her, however, the men of her companionship not being of moods stern enough to be at her side. Cuffe turned away from this sight in still stronger disgust; and just at that moment a common cry arose from the boats. Looking round he was just in time to see the unfortunate Caraccioli dragged from his knees by the neck until he rose, by a steady man-of-war pull, to the end of the yard; leaving his companion alone on the scaffold, still lost in prayer. There was a horrible minute of the struggles between life and death, when the body, so late the tenement of an immortal spirit, hung, like one of the jewel-blocks of the ship, dangling passively at the end of the spar, as insensible as the wood which sustained it! CHAPTER XV. Sleep, sleep, thou sad one, on the sea! He is not near to hurt thee, or to save: DANA. A LONG summer's evening did the body of Francesco Caraccioli hang suspended at the yard-arm of the Minerva; a revolting spectacle to his countrymen, and to most of the strangers who had been the witnesses of his end. Then was it lowered into a boat, its feet loaded with double-headed shot, and it was carried out a league or more into the bay, and cast into the sea. The revolting manner in which it rose to the surface and confronted its destroyers, a fortnight later, has passed into history; and to this day forms one of the marvels related by the ignorant and wonder-loving of that region. As for Ghita, she disappeared, no one knew how; Vito Viti and his companions being too much absorbed with the scene to note the tender and considerate manner in which Raoul rowed her off from a spectacle which could but be replete with horrors to one so situated. Cuffe himself stood only a few minutes longer; but he directed his boat's crew to pull alongside of the Proserpine. In half-an-hour after the execution took place, this frigate was aweigh; and then she was seen standing out of the bay, before a light air, covered with canvass from her truck to her hammock-cloths. Leaving her, for the moment, we will return to the party in the skiff. * Singular as was this occurrence, and painful as it must have proved to the parties to the execution, it is one of the simplest consequences of natural causes. All animal matter swells in water previously to turning corrupt. A body which has become of twice its natural size in this manner, as a matter of course, displaces twice the usual quantity of water; the weight of the mass remaining the same. Most human frames Neither Carlo Giuntotardi, nor Ghita Caraccioli - for so we must continue to call the girl, albeit the name is much too illustrious to be borne by one of her humble condition in life - but neither of these two had any other design in thus seeking out the unfortunate admiral, than to perform what each believed to be a duty. As soon as the fate of Caraccioli was decided, both were willing to return to their old position in life; not that they felt ashamed to avow their connexion with the dead; but because they were quite devoid of any of that worldly ambition which renders rank and fortune necessary to happiness. When he left the crowd of boats, Raoul pulled towards the rocks which bound the shores of the bay, near the gardens of Portici. This was a point sufficiently removed from the common anchorage to be safe from observation; and yet so near as to be reached in considerably less than an hour. As the light boat proceeded, Ghita gradually regained her composure. She dried her eyes, and looked around her inquiringly, as if wondering whither their companion was taking them. "I will not ask you, Raoul, why you are here, at a moment like this, and whence you have come," she said; "but I may ask whither you are now carrying us? Our home is at St. Agata, on floating, in their natural state, so long as the lungs are inflated with air; it follows that one in this condition would bring up with it as much weight in iron, as made the difference between its own gravity, and that of the water it displaced. The upright attitude of Caraccioli was owing to the shot attached to the feet; of which, it is also probable, one or two had become loosened. the heights above Sorrento, and on the other side of the bay. We go there annually to pass a month with my mother's sister; who asks this much of our love." "If I did not know all this, Ghita, I would not, and could not be here. I have visited the cottage of your aunt this day; followed you to Naples; heard of the admiral's trial and sentence; understood how it would affect your feelings; traced you on board the English admiral's ship, and was in waiting as you found me; having first contrived to send away the man who took you off. All this has come about as naturally as the feeling which has induced me to venture, again, into the lion's mouth." "The pitcher that goes often to the well, Raoul, gets broken at last," said Ghita, a little reproachfully, though it surpassed her power to prevent the tones of tenderness from mingling with her words. "You know all, Ghita. After months of perseverance, and a love such as man seldom felt before, you deliberately and coldly refused to be my wife; - nay, you have deserted Monte Argentaro purposely to get rid of my importunities; for there I could go with the lugger at any moment; and have come here upon this bay, crowded with the English, and other enemies of France, fancying that I would not dare to venture hither. - Well, you see with what success; for neither Nelson, nor his two-deckers, can keep Raoul Yvard from the woman he loves, let him be as victorious and skilful as he may!" The sailor had ceased rowing to give vent to his feelings in this speech, neither of the two colloquists regarding the presence of Carlo Giuntotardi any more than if he had been a part of themselves. This indifference to the fact that a third person was a listener proceeded from habit, the worthy scholar and religionist being usually too abstracted to attend to concerns so light as love and the youthful affections. Ghita was not surprised either at the reproaches of her suitor, or at his perseverance; and her conscience told her that he uttered but the truth in attributing to her the motives he had, in urging her uncle to make their recent change of residence; for, while a sense of duty had induced her to quit the towers, her art was not sufficient to suggest the expediency |