The Admiral was dressed with extreme care in full Court rig, in order to bring off the Royal Family with even more punctilio than had been observed at their State visit after our victory at the Nile. Although it was dark, the Royal standard was up at the main, as the illustrious exiles to the other part of their own kingdom mounted the broad gangway which had been let down for them. I should have said that My Lady was in attendance on Her Majesty, and Sir William talking to the King upon the only two subjects which at that moment for Ferdinand the First of the Two Sicilies and Fourth of something else possessed the smallest interest—some treasure which he had suddenly recollected, without which he positively refused to quit the Bay of Naples, and the prospects of sport at a hunting box in the interior, a little south of Palermo. As the lamps at the top of the gangway shone on them, Sir William’s tall spare figure and snow-white hair contrasted strongly with the King’s big powerful frame, heavy jaws and grizzled whiskers. It tickled my boyish fancy that this worthy and complacent pair of husbands should both have such very large noses—though Ferdinand’s was more of the Roman, and Sir William’s of the door-knocker type.
Their beautiful wives were talking busily as they came on board. Her Majesty proved not a very good sailor, if it is fair to say that anything could be proved in the weather which we were about to encounter. The Admiral was violently sick during its continuance. But I thought Her Majesty not above the ordinary as a sailor, though her courage and dignity made her hold out long after other women would have given in. I judge that My Lady was pressing the conversation, it being well known how potent an antidote for the sea-sickness it is to divert the attention.
They came on board the evening of the 21st. For two days afterwards we had a fresh north-easterly wind, which disturbed the sea very little, and would have carried us straight into Palermo. But the King would not be budged, because of the treasure which had been left behind, and the Admiral had reasons of his own for humouring him. Once on board the Vanguard, the Royal persons and treasure were perfectly safe, the few French of the line in the Mediterranean all being blockaded in this or the other port. But there were others who were not safe, whose peril was the outcome of the secrecy with which the Royal Family and the Court and the English in Naples had been shipped. They were as marked for destruction, when the French should enter Naples, as those now on the Vanguard; and the transports and ourselves, lying in the roads for two days more, gave them all the opportunity of coming on board us, or the Portuguese vessels, which were always willing enough if there was no fighting in the wind.
Finally the missing treasure came on board, and the rest of the fugitives, who had been aided by the boats of the fleet and the landing of bodies of our sailors. The King displayed no concern about these unhappy persons who had to fly because they or their Governments were his sympathisers. He divided his time between play, and invocation to the Saints for weather which should at once be dead calm and have a very fine sailing breeze. To give him exactly what he desired would have needed much prayer to the saints.
I must own that sometimes in the year which followed, as for instance in these two days, I was a little oppressed by the Admiral’s unforgetting kindness. Having it in his head that I was such a friend of Will, he had impressed on the Captain a feeling that he desired us to be employed together as much as the ship’s needs permitted. The consequence was that while other Vanguards, during these two days, were ashore, having plenty of rough-and-tumble excitement over rescuing would-be fugitives from a populace which desired that they should stay and face the music, I was kept on the ship.
For Will it was well. With the ship crowded with Italians of rank, the Italian-speaking officer was a person of importance, and constantly in attendance on the Admiral, whose state-room had been given up for the Royal party, with whom were My Lady and Sir William. And there was really nothing left to be done. Proper parties were ashore guarding the embarkation of fugitives and securing that treasure. The duty of warping out the Neapolitan men-of-war laid up in the Mole, and jury-rigging them, and taking them to Messina, had been entrusted to the Portuguese, many of whom could hold sufficient conversation with Italians. It was impossible to trust the Neapolitans themselves to remove the ships. It was by no means certain that they would not prevent it, their Marine especially being disaffected and honeycombed with treason. From two of their line-of-battle ships—they were three of the line and three frigates—every man deserted and went on shore. But we sent a party of our seamen with officers from the Vanguard, who assisted in navigating them to a place of safety, which was found, almost against our expectation, at Messina.
The Admiral having made all possible dispositions—such as taking the ships to new berths out of cannon-shot of the forts, giving orders for the reception of the fugitives on to any of the fleet, getting the Neapolitan men-of-war out of the Mole, or burning them rather than let them fall into the hands of the French, leaving one or two ships to cruise between Capri and Ischia, in order to prevent the entrance of any English ship into the Bay of Naples—remained with the ladies, feeling that they were in a sense his guests. At the same time he was visibly desirous of making the delay, which was mightily irksome to one of his temperament, speed in the society of My Lady.
Will was, as I have said, in attendance on him, in which capacity he saw much of the lively Donna Rusidda, who was the Queen’s favourite lady-in-waiting, for her beauty and her graciousness, as well as for her high rank. Insensibly at intervals the Admiral and My Lady would draw a little apart. Whenever they did so, Donna Rusidda would assail Will.
“W-Will,” she began in rapid Italian, interspersed here and there with a word of English: “you want an explanation from me”—he hoped that she was going to say something about his suit to her, but she went on—“of that little billet doux I gave you for your captain. I will give it to you. That was a cipher agreed upon between the Admiral and him to give the number of men and how they should be armed.”
“Well, dear lady, I have guessed that already.”