Well, to cut a long story short, we lay kicking about the Bay, kicking about on the ripple of the north-east breeze, for three days and two nights, waiting for the word to weigh. I could not, except in the light of future events, say that we were wasting time, for I believe that in it we received into the fleet every person who had both the will and the power to fly. And the Portuguese, under our Admiral’s eye, bestirred themselves in making ready the unfitted Neapolitan ships. But in the two days that followed we often bitterly regretted the delay, for hardly were we outside the jaws which the Island of Capri makes with the horns of the Bay, when there arose the great storm of which the Admiral wrote, “It blew harder than I ever experienced since I have been at sea,” and the wind had chopped round to the sou’-west.
It was about half-past one of the morning when a sudden hurricane split the Vanguard’s topsails, and then an indescribable scene ensued. An extraordinary tribute was paid to the greatness of the Admiral. The shivering Neapolitans expected even the elements to bow down to the man who, never quite proof against sea-sickness, was at this moment assailed by it in its most violent form. They all crowded into his state-room—I cannot think how many—and the air was filled with shrieks of terror; but none, I am proud to say, from the Royal Family, or Sir William and My Lady, or Donna Rusidda. Indeed, these two ladies were as valiant, and had their sea-legs as firmly, as any in the ship on that awful night.
The Admiral had done all in his power for the comfort of the Royal exiles. Not only had the whole ship been smartened up with paint, and every one of the officers given up his berth, but cots had been specially built for them. However, at the last, there had been such haste that no bed-linen had been provided. For the Queen herself, there was help in the shape of My Lady’s own bed. With her usual energy and foresight My Lady had disposed her arrangements very well, and had shipped everything of consequence, except such things as were necessarily left for maintaining the usual appearances, at the moment of flight, the value of which I have heard variously estimated from £3000 to £30,000—including, for instance, the splendid State carriage, in which she and Sir William went to the reception of the Turkish Minister, where they stayed until the moment of embarkation, leaving their coach and men peacefully waiting until all the guests had gone; they themselves having walked out at a side door and so down to the landing-place in the Arsenal and the barge of the Alcmena.
My Lady gave up her bed to the Queen, and betook herself to nursing the Queen’s children, poor little creatures, whose olive-complexioned faces turned a frightful colour, and whose little hearts were frightened worse than death. It was on the next day after that, that one little fellow—Prince Albert—having bravely followed the urging that, if he would but eat a hearty meal, he should be cured, was taken violently ill immediately thereon, and after lingering on all day in agony, died in My Lady’s arms, with his little arms round her neck, and her trying to keep him in life with the fondest and gentlest and most motherly kisses that ever man saw; thinking, I doubt not, of her own babe somewhere in England, which she had never been allowed to see since they took it away from her younger much than this. Of all that knew, there was not a dry eye in the ship. Even the Queen’s proud courage broke, which danger at embarking, sickness, and the prospect of death more imminent from the sea than it had been from the knives of the rebels or the guillotine of the French, had been unable to shake.
As the tall, slender form of the daughter of Maria Theresa walked in proud uprightness on to the barge, and up the gangway of the Vanguard, she looked the great Queen that she was. Her Majesty had her faults and plenty, but it was not in the face of peril that you saw them.
The only one of all the Queen’s household that had both the will and the power to help was Donna Rusidda, and she helped My Lady in mercy to the children. Indeed, she had the whole care of them whenever My Lady was waiting on the Queen, which was often, she doing the work of half a dozen servants, lest the Queen should ever lose the appearance of being a queen, at the moment when her dynasty seemed to be in the balance.
There was much difference in the way they handled their charges. My Lady gathered them in a large motherly way, showing how strong in her lay the mother’s instinct, which was never to have its full expression. They swarmed over her, little sick things, but bravely obeying their mother’s behest not to cry or speak their fear. She fondled them, and crooned to them, and her great sympathetic nature was like a fire to warm their marrowless bones.
Donna Rusidda, on the other hand, knew little of children, had no instinct for them; but even at such a moment they could not be indifferent to the prettiness of her slender person, undisordered in the least by the storm. She was beautiful, and undismayed, and full of tender smiles, and making jest of everything that flew from side to side, as the ship lurched over and stayed so long down that it looked as if it would never rise again. And then it did rise, and slowly climbing over the hill of its own centre, went down even deeper on the other side, with a crash of everything that could move. She knew of no more to amuse them than to bid them watch for the biggest lurch; and yet the picture of her unruffled courage and beauty, and the ring of her laugh, and her outstretched arms, won their childish hearts, more especially when, with two clinging to her, she called to Will, whom the Admiral had kept among the fugitives so close-packed in his state-room, to make the ladies of a better heart. And better, indeed, he could not have chosen for the purpose. As far as sickness went, I was as good a sailor as Will; and, as my fellows in the gun-room had often cheerfully pointed out, it was our profession to die an early and violent death. Which I was perfectly ready to do—much readier, indeed, when life was full of life, and I had a long life before me, than now when I am shelved. But Will, with his tall bolt-upright figure, his proud fair face, and his stern blue eyes, had as much effect as any of the saints they were beseeching could have had by appearing in the midst of them. Here was one beyond the reach, as it were, of human weaknesses. Indians have worshipped lesser white men as gods. The children, too, were glad of Will: he had often been about the Palace talking to them—indeed, he was the only officer in the fleet who could talk to them—and the poor little pallid wretches expected this grand sailor, whom they thought a much finer man than the Admiral, to do something. All he did was to hover back to Donna Rusidda, whenever none of the other ladies were shrieking for him, and help to hold the children from being flung about. He showed them all the respectful kindness that was in his nature. For the Queen (except her courage) and the Court (except Donna Rusidda) he had, as has been shown, a feeling something like loathing and contempt; but he had been brought up with High Tory ideas, and for Royalty in the abstract he had a courtly respect, and to these poor bits of Royalty, half dead with sea-sickness and fear, his heart opened beyond its wont.
There was another difference between the Sicilian Princess and My Lady. My Lady let all the children cling to her together, even when they were sick, thinking it cruel to them to flinch and that she could change her dress if need were. The Sicilian Princess, on the other hand, would have no more than two of them at once; and holding them tenderly, but adroitly, helped them through their troubles, always contriving to shrink her pretty person out of the danger. Even Will performed the office quite creditably; and, being in his oilskins, had no fear. Two minutes on deck in such a sea would put that right.
His eyes were much on Donna Rusidda. It gratified his fastidious soul to see a woman keep her daintiness in such a stye, and her courage, and her laughter, when the high-sounding officers of the Sicilian army and navy were a wallowing mass of Saints and sickness. But I, looking in to see where I could be of any use, was not blinded by my love for Will from seeing that neither he standing so godlike, nor the Princess playfully caring for the children, and thereby showing her stout heart, were comparable to My Lady, whose loveliness must have been dimmed, if such loveliness could have been dimmed, while she wandered with her hair and her clothing pulled awry by the children—aye, and by the grown-up men and women of the Court too—performing the offices of an angel and many servants.