"Darest thou! abominable heretic as thou art, violate the house of God?"
cried a tall, fierce-looking and fanatical monk, rushing forward, with
flushed cheeks and kindling eyes, and holding aloft a ponderous ebony
crucifix. "Pause! lest the thunders of offended Heaven be hurled upon
ye: pause! lest the vials of wrath----"
"Pshaw!" I exclaimed, impatiently; "we may parley here till sunset.
Soldiers, forward to the chapel: there you will doubtless discover the
rogue." My followers rushed past; a volley of execrations burst from
the padri, and I was assailed with cries of--
"Paganico infame! malandrino! infidel! damnable heretic!" and a thousand
other injurious and ridiculous epithets. I heeded them not; but, at the
head of my party, burst into the chapel of the monastery. I had augured
rightly: there the fugitive was discovered.
Pale as death, ghastly and bloody from a sword wound on the head, a
savage-looking fellow was dragged by force from the foot of the great
gilt crucifix on the altar; to the rail of which he clung for a moment
with convulsive energy. The soldiers brought him before me, and, by
their fixed bayonets, kept back the exasperated priests; who continued
to pour forth upon us a ceaseless torrent of invectives and
maledictions, which we regarded no more than the wind.
"Are you the unhappy man who is guilty of murder?" said I. He replied
only by a wild and unmeaning stare.
"Unhappy wretch! your name?"
"Giosue of Montecino," said he, suddenly and fiercely. I trembled for
poor Oliver, on remembering the name of his rival.
"Villain! what fiend tempted you to slay your unhappy cousin?"
He started, as if stung by a serpent.
"She is dead, then!" he said in a hoarse and almost inarticulate voice,
while his head drooped upon his heaving breast. Suddenly uttering a
howl like a wild beast, he broke away from the soldiers, escaping their
levelled bayonets; and, finding the gate secured, scrambled up the
rugged outer wall like a polecat; there balancing himself, he turned,
and regarding me with a scornful scowl, he burst into a bitter and
hysterical laugh. The soldiers rushed towards him, and one fired; but I
threw up his firelock, and the ball passed close to the head of the
assassin, who never winced. Escape was now impossible. On one side of
him bristled twenty bayonets; en the other was a tremendous precipice,
with a deep river flowing at its base several hundred feet below. The
slightest dizziness might have been fatal to him. But folding his arms
he uttered a laugh of defiance, and called upon us to fire. I was
strongly tempted to put his talisman to the proof; but restrained my
exasperated soldiers.
"Wretch," said I; "know you aught of a British officer, who has been
missing since last night?"
"Yes," he replied, with a sardonic grin, shaking his clenched right hand
aloft with savage exultation. "These are the fingers that fastened on
his throat with a tiger's clutch."
"You slew him!" I cried, and drew a pistol from my sash.
"I did not--ha! and yet I did."
"How, villain?" He laughed scornfully again.
"Hear me, Giosue Montecino," said I: "you see this pistol? I might in
one moment deprive you of existence----"
"Ha! ha!" laughed the assassin.
"Yet I will spare your life, if you will tell me the fate of my
comrade."
"My life? Bagatella! ho--ho! I want it not. Fools--dolts that ye are!
think ye that I am afraid to die? Here is my breast--a thousand bullets
were welcome--straight to the heart--fire!" and he smote his bosom as he
spoke. There was something almost noble in his aspect at that moment,
notwithstanding its wildness and repulsiveness.
"Hear me, fellow:--the Lieutenant Lascelles"----
"Ha!" he ground his teeth madly. "Curses hurl him to that perdition
into which he has hurried me! At this moment he feels in the body some
of those agonies I endure in the spirit. O, Dianora!--thou whose very
shadow I worshipped,--I who loved the very ground you trod upon!" The
inexplicable ruffian sobbed heavily; yet his blood-shot eyes were never
moistened by a tear. "O, Dianora!" he continued, in a voice which,
though husky, yet expressed the most intense pathos. "Who was the fiend
that nerved me to destroy thee--and so barbarously? Who, but this
accursed Englishman! Believe me, Signor, I had not the least intention
of slaying her last night: O no! none--none!" He wrung his hands
wildly. "What could be further from my thoughts? Disguised as her
lover--as this Oliver--I intended to have carried her off; but her
endearing accents, addressed as to him, fell like scorching fire upon my
heart. I could restrain my demoniac feelings no longer. O, horror! Yet
I have done nothing that I would not commit again, rather than behold
her in the arms of--of--Maladetto!--his name is poison to my lips!"
"Madman, come down from the wall."
"Would you learn the fate of your friend?" he asked, exultingly.
"Had I a mountain of gold to give you--"
"Gold?--fool!--what is gold to me? Listen. Waylaid by my companions
last night, the dog you call your comrade was dashed from his horse by
their clubs. He fought bravely, and with his sabre laid open my head:
my own blood blinded me. Ha! a moment, and my hand was on his
throat--my acciaro at his breast--yet I spared him."
"Heaven will reward you"----
"Ha--ha! A sudden death suited not my purpose or my hate. Slow,
consuming, diabolical mental tortures were what I wanted: and what think
you we did?" I was breathless; I could not ask, but Giosue continued:
"Bound with cords, he was borne to a ruined vault among the lonely
mountains yonder; there amid stinging adders, hissing vipers, bloated
toads, and voracious polecats, we flung him down, tied hand and foot,
stunned and bleeding. Then closing the aperture, we piled up earth and
stones and rocks against it. There let him perish! unseen, unknown,
unheard. May never an ave be said over his bones, and may a curse
blight, haunt, and blast, to all futurity, the spot where they lie." He
paused for a moment, and then continued more slowly and energetically.
"To laugh to scorn the terror of death was the glory of the Greek and
the Roman; and I will show thee, Signor Inglese, that Giosue of
Montecino can despise it, as nobly as his classic fathers may have done
in the days of old." He raised aloft a long bright poniard, which he
suddenly drew forth from his sleeve.
"Madman!--desperado!" I exclaimed; "hold, for the sake of mercy! A
word--a word--I will give you a thousand ducats! life! all! anything!
but say where you have imprisoned my friend?--for Heaven's sake say!"
"Never!" said he, with a triumphant scowl---"never: let him perish with
myself. Love for Dianora led me to destroy her; and love for her still,
teaches me that to survive would be the foulest and basest cowardice!"
He struck the stiletto to his heart, and fell dead at my feet.
I was horror-stricken: not by the suicide of the assassin, but by the
revelation he had had just made. Of its truth I could not entertain a
doubt, The situation of the unfortunate Lascelles, pinioned, wounded,
and entombed alive, to endure all the protracted agonies of death by
starvation, rushed vividly upon my mind, and overwhelmed me with rage
and mortification. I explained to my soldiers the terrible confession
of the fierce Giosue, and their emotions were not much short of my own.
We endured tantalization in its bitterest sense. What would I not have
given that the convulsed corpse of the vindictive Montecino were yet
endued with life. But, alas! the ruffian had perished in his villainy
with the important secret undisclosed, and the horrible fate of my
friend could not be averted.
And Giosue, wretch as he was, I pitied him. His had been the burning
love, and his the deadly hatred of his country:
"The cold in clime, or cold in blood,
Their love it scarce deserves a name;
But _his_ was like the lava's flood,
That boils in Etna's breast of flame."
Slowly and dejectedly we quitted the monastery, as the sun was setting
behind the hills of Sicily; and marching in silence towards Scylla, we
reached a third time the place where Oliver's glove and gorget had been
found. There we made an involuntary halt, and gazed around us with the
keenest scrutiny, in the hope of discovering some clue to the place of
his immurement. My brave party seemed very unwilling to return to
Scylla without making another effort to rescue the victim of Montecino.
Innumerable were the ideas suggested and plans proposed; but none of
them seemed worthy of attention, save one of Sergeant Gask's.
"The rascal mentioned a ruined vault among the hills," said he: "now
what think you, Captain Dundas, of searching the ruins on the mountain
yonder? And, by my faith, sir! the foot-marks and traces of blood lead
off in that direction. See! the lower branches of the shrubs are
broken, the withered leaves of the last year are trodden down, and
bloody tracks are on the grass."
"The sergeant is right, sir," muttered the soldiers, pleased with his
acuteness.
"Move on, then--forward to the old castle; any active occupation is
preferable to this horrid state of idle suspense."
A quarter of an hour's rapid marching brought us to the castelletto, a
little tower in a state of great dilapidation, covered with masses of
bronze-like ivy, and the beautiful wild flowers of fruitful Italy. A
large owl flew from one of the shattered openings, and with a shrill
scream soared on its heavy wings through the evening sky. The woods and
hills around us were growing dark; the place was still as the grave: the
ivy leaves rustling tremulously on the rugged masonry of the ruin, and a
rivulet tinkling through a fissure of a neighbouring rock, were the only
sounds we heard. Solemn pines towered around it on every hand, and the
aspect of the landscape was peculiarly desolate and gloomy. A musket was
fired as a signal, and with a thousand reverberations the wooded hills
gave back the echo. With heads bent to the ground, we listened
intently; but there was no response, and we looked blankly in each
other's faces.
"This cannot be the place," said I in a tone of sadness, about to move
unwillingly away.
"Stay, sir--look here, Captain Dundas," cried Gask; "here is blood on
the grass, and, sure as I live, stones freshly heaped up there!"
"Right--by Jove! Gask, you are an acute fellow. Pile your firelocks,
lads, and clear away this heap of rubbish."
Flushed with hope, the soldiers attacked the pile of stones indicated by
the sergeant: there were bushes, earth, and fragments of ruined masonry,
all evidently but recently piled up against the base of the tower.
Rapidly they rolled down the heavy blocks, and toiled so strenuously
that in three minutes the whole heap was cleared away, and a little
arched aperture disclosed. An exclamation of joy and hope burst from
the whole party: we had found the place. Gask and the little bugler
descended into the vault--a dark, damp, and hideous hole under the
ruins. A faint moan drew them cautiously to a corner, and there they
found the object of all our search and anxiety--Oliver Lascelles,
benumbed by cold, and his limbs swollen almost to bursting by the tight
cordage which confined them. He was speechless and half-stifled by the
noxious vapours of the dungeon: had we been half an hour later he must
have expired. When we drew him forth, he was so pale, haggard, and
death-like, that his aspect shocked me; but the pure fresh breeze of the
balmy evening revived him, and he recovered rapidly. He could not
address us at first; but his looks of thankfulness, joy, and recognition
were most expressive. The soldiers were merry and happy, every face
beamed with gladness; even Gask's usually grave and melancholy visage
was brightened by a smile.
We had little time for explanation; we were in a dangerous vicinity,
from which it was necessary to retire without a moment's delay. Oliver
was quite enfeebled; but, supported on the sergeant's arm and mine, he
contrived to walk, though slowly, and we set out immediately for the
castle of Scylla.
Gask afterwards told me, that in the vault "he had touched something
that made his flesh creep." It was a small and delicate female hand. I
never mentioned the circumstance to Oliver; who was long in recovering
from the effects of his perilous love adventure. But I had no doubt the
dead hand was poor Dianora's: the _forfeited hand_, which in cruel
mockery that incarnate demon Giosue had thrown beside her lover.
In the bustle of succeeding and more important events the interest we
took in Lascelles' affair gradually subsided. But it was long ere he
forgot the fate of Dianora, and the horrible death which, by a lucky
combination of incidents, he had so narrowly escaped; and longer still
ere he recovered his wonted buoyancy of spirit and lightness of heart.
*CHAPTER XVII.*
*UNEXPECTED PERILS.*
The near approach of the enemy made it apparent that the town of Scylla
would soon be destroyed by the shot and shell their artillery would pour
upon it; and that the Free Corps, who occupied its half-ruined streets,
would be sacrificed without being of service to the garrison in the
castle; I, therefore, telegraphed to the _Electra_, to send off a boat,
as I wished to consult with her commander about the transmission of
those troops to Messina.
A strong breeze had been blowing from the south-west all day, and the
sea ran with such fury through the Straits that no boat could come off
until after sunset, when there was a lull. Immediately, on being
informed that a boat had arrived at the sea staircase, I buckled on my
sabre, threw my cloak round me, and hurried off, intending to return
before the ever-anxious Bianca had discovered my absence. How vain were
my anticipations!
The long _fetch_ of the sea running from Syracuse rolled the breakers
with great fury on the castle rock, and the boat was tossed about like a
cork among the foaming surf that seethed and hissed around us. As the
oars dipped in the water and she shot away, I seated myself in the
stern-sheets, beside the little middy who held the tiller-ropes. The
frigate lay nearly a mile to the southward, and there was such a
tremendous current against us that the six oarsmen, though straining
every nerve and sinew, found it impossible to make head against it.
"I wish we may make the frigate to-night, sir," said the midshipman,
looking anxiously at the clouds: "there's a squall coming from the
south-south-east, and these Straits are an awkward place to be caught by
one. What do you think, Tom Taut?"
"Think, sir? why that we'll have a dirty night," replied the sailor whom
he addressed: a grim, brown, and brawny tar. "When I sailed in the
_Polly Femus_, 74, we had just such a night as this off Scylla, and I
won't be in a hurry forgetting it!"
It was now past sunset, in the month of February, and the darkness of
the louring sky increased rapidly. Through the thin mist floating over
the surface of the water, the frigate loomed large; but when the rising
wind cleared it away, we found the distance increasing between us: the
strong current was carrying us, at the rate of five knots an hour,
towards the terrible rock we had just left; which rose from the water
like a black gigantic tower, and seemed ever to be close by, frowning
its terrors upon us. Dense banks of vapour soon shrouded the land and
hid the frigate: it grew so dark that we knew not which way to steer.
The seamen still continued to pull fruitlessly; for we made so much
sternway that I expected to find the frail craft momently stranded on
the rocky beach.
"We shall never reach the frigate to-night, unless she fills and makes a
stretch towards us," said the middy. "This current will not change till
daylight, and the Lord knows when the wind will chop about. It has been
blowing from Syracuse ever since the poor little _Delight_ was driven on
the rocks yonder."
"You cannot fetch Scylla, I suppose."
"Lord, no, sir! we must give it a wide berth: the breakers will be
running against it in mountains just now. We must put up the helm and
run with the wind and tide, to avoid swamping; and if we escape being
sucked into Charybdis on the westward, or beached under the cliffs of
Palmi to the northward, we may consider ourselves lucky dogs."
"But we may be thrown upon a part of the coast occupied by the enemy."
"Better that than go to old Davy, sir," said the grey-haired
bow-oarsman, "as I nearly did when the _Polly Femus_, 74, came through
these same Straits of Messina."
"When?" said I. "Lately?"
"Lord love you, no, sir--why 't was in the year one."
"One?"
"That is 1801. We were standing for Malta with a stiff breeze from the
nor'-east. The _Polly Femus_ was close hauled on the starboard tack----"
"D--n the _Polyphemus_," cried the midshipman, testily, as he put the
helm up; "take in your loose gaff, Tom: if we are not picked up by the
_Amphion_, your tune will be changed before morning. Hoste keeps a good
look out!"
"He was made a sailor of in the _Polly_--whew! beg pardon, sir," said
the old fellow, who could not resist making another allusion to his old
ship.
"Faith! Captain Dundas," said the middy, "it is so dark that I have not
the slightest notion of our whereabouts."
"Yonder's a spark away to windward, sir," said old Tom. "The _Electra_,
cannot be less than somewhere about two miles off--a few fathoms more or
less."
At that moment the frigate fired a gun; the red flash gleamed through
the gloom, and after a lapse the report was borne past us on the night
wind. A blue light was next burned; it shone like a distant star above
the black and tumbling sea, then expired: and so did all our hopes of
reaching the ship--the sound of her gun having informed us that we had
been swept by the current far to the north of the Lanterna of Messina,
which was rapidly being lost amid the murky vapour.
"Keep a good look out there forward," cried the middy: "if we miss the
_Amphion_, we may all go to the bottom, or be under weigh for a French
prison by this time to-morrow."
"Ay, ay, sir," replied the sailor through his hand, while, bending
forward, he strove to pierce the gloom a-head.
"Give way, men--cheerily now."
The rowers stretched back over the thwarts till their oars bent like
willow wands, and as the strong current was with us now, we flew through
the foaming water with the speed of a race-horse.
"The _Amphion_ should be somewhere hereabouts," said the midshipman, as
the oarsmen suspended their labours after a quarter of an hour's
pulling: we anxiously scanned the gloomy watery waste, but could discern
no trace of her. Vapour and obscurity involved us on every side, and
our minds became a prey to apprehensions, while our blood chilled with
the cold atmosphere, and a three hours' seat in an open boat at such a
season. The tower of the Lantern had vanished; a single star only was
visible, and the inky waves often hid it, as the boat plunged down into
the dark trough of the midnight sea.
Suddenly the broad moon showed her silvery disc above the level horizon;
her size seemed immense, and as the thin gauzy clouds rolled away from
her shining face, we saw the black waves rising and falling in strong
outline between. Her aspect was gloomy and louring.
"When the moon sets, the current will begin to run northward," said the
experienced little mid; "and we shall have a capital chance of being
sucked into the Calofaro, or stranded on Punta Secca. Would to God, we
saw the frigate!"
As he spoke, a large vessel passed across the bright face of that
magnificent moon, which shed a long line of silver light across the
troubled water, brightening the summits of the waves as they rose
successively from the dark bosom of the sea. The effect was beautiful,
as the vessel passed on the rolling surge, and heaving gracefully, slid
away into obscurity.
"A large frigate on the starboard tack," said the midshipman, as she
disappeared: "she is five miles off."
"That's the _Amphion_, your honour," said Tom Taut; "I know her as well
as the old _Polly Femus_."
"Are you sure?" I asked with anxiety.
"Sure?" replied Tom, energetically spitting his quid to leeward; "I know
her in a moment, by the rake of her spars. Her mizen top-sail
aback--her courses shivering: I know her better than any ship on the
station, except the darling old _Polly_. Bill Hoste is creeping along
shore, after some of these gun-boats the _Delight_ let slip so easily."
"If I judge rightly, we must be somewhere off Palmi."
"Hark!" said the midshipman, and the roar of billows rolling on the
shore confirmed my supposition.
"Breakers ahead!" cried the man at the bow, and we beheld a long white
frothy line, glimmering through the gloom; and above it towered the dark
outline of a lofty coast. The current shot us among the surf; which
boiled around us as white as if we were amid the terrors of Charybdis.
A little cove, where the waves rolled gently up the sandy slope, invited
us to enter; the boat ran in, and we were immediately in the smooth
water of a little harbour, where the dark wild woods overhung the rocks
at its entrance, and all around it on every side. Here we hoped to
remain unseen, till daylight revealed our "whereabouts," as the middy
had it.
For a time we kept the oars in the rowlocks, ready to retire on a
moment's notice; but finding that not a sound, save the dashing sea,
woke the echoes of that lonely place, I volunteered to land and make a
reconnoissance; desiring the midshipman to pull southward, along the
shore, in case of any alarm, that I might be picked up at some other
point. Belting my sabre tighter, I threw aside my cloak, and sprang
ashore. On walking a little way forward, through the wood, I found the
country open, and saw lights at a distance; which I conjectured to be
those of Palmi or Seminara, where Regnier had concentrated a strong body
of troops.
Struggling forward among a wilderness of prostrate columns and shattered
walls overgrown with creeping plants and foliage (probably the ruins of
ancient _Taurianum_), I often stopped and bent to the ground to listen;
but heard only the creaking trees, the gurgle of a lonely rill seeking
its devious path to the sea, or the rustle of withered leaves, swept
over the waste by the rising wind. But the roll of a distant drum and
the flash of a cannon about two miles off, arrested my steps and made me
think of returning: I conjectured it to be the morning gun from the
French fort at Palmi. Daylight soon began to brighten the summits of
the Apennines, and the waves, as they rolled on each far off promontory
and cape. Having nearly a mile to walk, I began hurriedly to retrace my
steps; for the dawn stole rapidly on. As I walked on, the deep boom of
a cannonade and the sharp patter of small arms made my heart leap with
excitement and anxiety, and spurred me in my flight. Breaking through
the wood, I rushed breathlessly to the shore; but alas! the boat was
gone: I saw it pulled seaward, with a speed which the strong flow of the
morning current accelerated. In close chase, giving stroke for stroke,
while the crew plied their muskets and twenty-four pounder, followed one
of those unlucky gun-boats captured by the French: it had been anchored
in the same cove, and had discovered our little shallop the moment day
broke.
The pursued and the pursuers soon disappeared behind a promontory, and I
found myself alone, far behind the enemy's lines, and almost without a
chance of escape. Cursing the zeal which had led me on such a fruitless
reconnoissance, I retired into a beech wood, as the safest place; and
lay down in a thicket to reflect on my position, and form a plan for
extrication from it.
*CHAPTER XVIII.*
*CAPTURED BY THE ENEMY--THE TWO GENERALS.*
I was only twelve miles distant from Scylla; but as every approach to it
was closely blocked up by Regnier, whose troops covered the whole
province from sea to sea, every attempt to reach it would be attended by
innumerable dangers and difficulties: yet, confiding in the loyalty of
the Calabrese, and the influence my name had among them, I did not
despair of regaining the fortress, by seeking its vicinity through the
most retired paths.
Except my sword, spurs, and Hessian boots, I had nothing military about
me; as I wore a Calabrian doublet of grey cloth, and a nondescript
forage-cap. As I walked forward, the trees became more scattered, and
the openness of the ground made the utmost circumspection necessary. A
sudden cry of "Halte! arretez!" made me pause; and, within a few paces,
I beheld a French vidette--a lancer in his long; scarlet cloak, which
flowed from his shoulders over the crupper of his horse, and, like his
heavy plume and tricoloured banderole, was dank with dew.
"Ah, sacre coquin!" he cried, lowering his lance, and charging me at
full speed. "I see you are an Englishman." I sprang behind a tree, and
as he passed me in full career, by a blow of my sabre I hewed the steel
head from his lance. At that moment an officer rode up, and, placing a
pistol at my head, commanded me to yield. Resistance was vain, and I
surrendered my sabre in the most indescribable sorrow and chagrin; for
thoughts of Bianca, of a long separation and imprisonment, of all my
blighted hopes of happiness, honour, and promotion, and of the important
trust reposed in me, rushed in a flood upon my mind: almost stupified, I
was led away by my captor.
A few minutes' walk brought us to the bivouac of a cavalry brigade,
which was in all the bustle of preparation for the march; while six
trumpeters, blowing "boot and saddle," made the furthest dingles of the
forest ring. The horses were all picqueted under trees, or within
breast-ropes; and the officer informed me that the brigade was that of
General Compere, before whom he led me.
Rolled up in a cloak, the general was seated at the foot of a tree;
behind him stood his mounted orderly, holding his charger by the bridle.
His aide-de-camp and a number of officers lounged round him, smoking
cigars, drinking wine from a little barrel, and joking with great
hilarity ere they marched. The ashes of the watch-fires smouldered
near; the mist was curling between the branches of the leafless trees,
and the rising sun glittered on the bright lance-heads, the gay caps,
and accoutrements of the dashing lancers; who were rapidly unpicqueting
their chargers, and forming close column of squadrons on the skirts of
the wood.
"Monsieur le vicomte is welcome as flowers in spring," said the general;
"but who is this?--Ah!" he exclaimed, suddenly recognising me, and
raising politely his cocked-hat. "I did not expect to have this
pleasure. You are the brave officer I met at Maida?"