The Admiral: A Romance of Nelson in the Year of the Nile

by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

And here I must go to the Journal for an account of the wonderful events which had been happening even during our brief absence.

Extract from the Journal, June the —th, 1799.

“After my Battles this has been the most extraordinary twenty-four hours of my life. Yesterday I drove out with Will and Trinder to a fête given in my honour by the Prince of Favara, now much impoverished, but the head of the chief Norman family in the Island, and therefore very well disposed to the English. When I say Norman, he was of course thoroughly Sicilian, as his family had been for centuries; but they are one of the few families of undoubted Norman descent, and therefore, when all the Two Sicilies are raving over their English protectors, feel that they have a sort of claim of kinship. I went out there, purposely, with no one from the ship beyond these two young officers, wishing to spare them the expense of entertaining the large company which goes when the fleet accepts an invitation. Indeed, I did not think seriously about staying overnight with them, having promised the dear faithful Emma to return if it could be managed, though she made it difficult for me by drawing pictures of intended assaults by brigands, without remembering how obstinate I am about flying from the face of an enemy. However, my hostess made such a point of it that I yielded; and when the guests left the fête, somewhat early in the night, I packed Will and Trinder with them to warn Emma that I should not be back. She took my warning in a different way, fortunately for me.

“In the interval I was like to have been kidnapped, or to have lost my life: the latter, I hear, for Buonaparte has been good enough to say that there is no safety for France while I am alive, and people about whom he says such things do not live long, when there are Frenchmen about.

“The plan was for a body of Frenchisers, disguised as brigands, to seize me while I was at the Favara, and carry me off to the mountains, or kill me in event of resistance. Which meant death. They had information that I should spend the night there, and they knew that the attendants at the fête were, save a mere handful, not servants of the Prince, but hired men, who would, with two exceptions (one of whom was in their pay), put off their liveries and depart with the guests. They were therefore few enough to be overpowered, even if they were all roused; and it might be possible to get to me unobserved by the rest of the household, when the accomplice opened the door—for my room lay in a distant part of the house. Information reached them also that Will and Trinder, who were to have slept in the ante-chamber of my suite, had been dispatched by me back to Palermo.

“But they had reckoned literally without their host, for when they arrived, the Prince of Favara, who was a very expert swordsman, had not retired. He was, it appears, hunting through his heirlooms for an ancient Norman seal with the arms of Tancredo di Mardolce, Prince of Favara, to present to me in honour of my visit to him; for the enormous iron chest, in which he kept such things, was open, and with the seal was found a letter which he had evidently just been writing in the most honouring terms, begging my acceptance of ‘this trifle,’ and giving its history. The accomplice must have been a stupid fellow, for instead of assuring himself that the Prince had retired, he merely waited until he should have retired by his usual habits. He then went down and opened the wicket in the great oak door. But he had neglected to see that the locks and hinges of this were oiled. The great gates had been open all day, and when they were closed, swung and locked easily. As, however, he opened the wicket, either the lock or the hinges gave a great rusty jar and startled the keen-eared Prince, who, hastening down to learn the cause, met the brigands mounting the stairs.

“He had time to draw his sword, and posting himself on the half-way landing, where a turn protected him from pistol shots till his assailants were within a sword’s length, received their onset. One or two were quickly slain, and the rest came on more cautiously. The Princess, who behaved with extraordinary courage, hearing the clash of steel, flew to him with his pistols, but seeing him engaged, knew that to take off his attention by handing them to him meant certain death. So with true Norman courage she stood at the head of the stair, waiting to do her part. The stair was so narrow that she could not fire past him without the danger of hitting him, though she did fire one of them over his head to show him that she was there, and in the hope of frightening the villains and rousing the servants. But the servants, sleeping in the basement, were divided from them by the brigands, and either did not hear or were too cowardly to move—most likely the latter.

“So she retreated up the stairs again, to stand at the head and watch her brother killed unless some miracle should save him.

“To rouse me was her first impulse. But here a woman’s devotion and instinct interfered. She had heard the men shouting to her brother: ‘Give up the Admiral and you shall go unharmed—our quarrel is not with you. We want his ransom.’ With a woman’s swift wit she divined that to call me was to play into their hands. I had only one arm, and she knew that I should not have brought pistols. She knew, too, that if she roused me I could not be so cowardly as to make my escape while my host was being killed for me; and she had hopes that, even if they killed her and her brother, they might either not find me, or that I might hear them tramping about for me and be able to barricade myself, until assistance arrived, summoned by the cowardly servants, who could be relied on to creep out and run to the city gate, though they would not fight.

“The Prince fought so well that her hopes rose for the moment, and she almost trusted that he might beat the assailants off for ever such a little time, when she could have given him his pistols, and indeed the pair of them have barricaded themselves behind the stout door at the head of the staircase. But the villains were crafty, and two of them charging up the stairs at once, one received her brother’s point, while the other fired his pistol right against the Prince’s heart, killing him on the spot. They then prepared to risk the remaining stairs; but the brave Princess called out to them from her post round the corner, that she had a pistol and would apply it to the first, in the way in which they killed her brother. This checked their ardour. They had been encouraged in their attack on the Prince by having firearms, whilst he had none. But now the case was changed: the first man up the steps would certainly be killed, and none would be the first. And there they stood, huddled on the stair, with beads of sweat dropping off their foreheads as they wavered between fear of a desperate woman and greed for the reward offered for me—alive or dead.