And running down the hatchway, she speedily reappeared, driving before her three men who had gone below to escape the storm.
Anita was also present, on horseback, in a battle fought at a place called Coritibani, where the Garibaldians, numbering scarcely eighty men, half of whom were infantry, were attacked by a large body of Brazilian cavalry. She was not satisfied with being a mere spectator; knowing that the rebels, as they kept up a constant fire, would soon exhaust their ammunition, she went to the baggage-waggons to see that the men were properly supplied with cartridges. She had not been there very long before the baggage-train was attacked by twenty or thirty Brazilian horsemen. Anita was a good rider, and could have saved herself; but she preferred to remain on the spot, encouraging the Garibaldians.
The Brazilians were victorious in this battle; Anita surrounded on every side, received orders to yield. Clapping spurs to her horse, she dashed through the midst of her foes. Several shots were fired after her; one, a pistol shot, went through her hat, cutting off a lock of hair, while another pierced her horse's head. The animal fell heavily to the ground, flinging her with violence from the saddle. Before she could recover her feet, the Brazilian troopers had made her prisoner.
Anita believed that her husband had been killed; so the Brazilian colonel gave her permission to search the battle-field for his body. She looked through the corpses again and again for several hours, and at last came to the conclusion that Garibaldi still lived, and she determined to rejoin him. That night, when the Brazilians had retired to rest, and when even the sentry began to nod, she succeeded in escaping to a farmhouse a quarter of a mile distant; where she seized a horse, and plunged into the forest, in the direction which she believed the Garibaldians to have taken.
For more than a week, Anita Garibaldi wandered alone amidst the almost impenetrable wilds of the dense Brazilian forests, without food, and exposed to the hourly chances of capture. More than once she was pursued by the enemy placed in ambush at various points. One stormy night, four horsemen, who were stationed at a ford of the river Canoas, believing her to be a phantom, fled in terror. Anita plunged boldly into the stream; and, although it was five hundred yards broad, and swollen by the mountain rivulets till it had assumed the aspect of a roaring cataract, she succeeded, holding on by her horse's mane, in reaching the opposite shore, amidst a shower of bullets from the Brazilians, who had found out their mistake.
After enduring for eight days every kind of danger and privation, she overtook the Garibaldians, and rejoined her husband.
"Yes, yes, gentlemen," added Garibaldi, when he related this anecdote, "my wife is valiant."
There are many more of these anecdotes related concerning the extraordinary bravery of Anita. She afterwards accompanied her husband on his return to Italy, in 1848, and was with him during the insurrection of Lombardy against Austria. In the following year she attended him throughout the siege of Rome. After the fall of the Eternal City in 1849, when Garibaldi was escaping to Venice, Anita, worn out by long suffering, died at Mandriole, a small village in the marshes of Ravenna.