The others laughed. “Well crowed, Percival! No doubt there is a great deal in what you say, still I suppose that even you will hardly claim that you are braver than other people.”
“Not braver,” Frank said; “but bravery is no good without backbone. If two men equally brave meet, it is the one with most ‘last’—that is what we call stamina—most endurance, most strength, and most skill, who must in the long-run win.”
“But the fault of you English is—I don’t mean it offensively—that you believe too much in yourselves.”
“At any rate,” Frank replied, “we don’t boast about ourselves, as some people do, and it is because we believe in ourselves that we are successful. For example, you all here believe that, small as is your number, you are going to defeat the Neapolitans, and I think that you will do it, because I also believe in you. It is that feeling among our soldiers and sailors—their conviction that, as a matter of course, they will in the long-run win—that has carried them through battles and wars against the biggest odds. That was the way that your Roman ancestors carried their arms over Europe. They were no braver than the men they fought, but they believed thoroughly in themselves, and never admitted to themselves the possibility of defeat. What a mad expedition ours would be if we had not the same feeling!”
“I won’t argue any more against you, Percival,” Rubini laughed; “and if I ever marry and have sons, I will send them over to be educated at one of your great schools—that is, if we have not, as I hope we may have by that time, schools of the same kind here. Can you fence? Do you learn that at your schools?”
“Not as a part of the school course. A fencing master does come down from London once a week, and some of the fellows take lessons from him. I did among others; but once a week is of very little use, and whenever I was in London during the holidays, I went pretty nearly every day to Angelo’s, which is considered the best school for fencing we have. Of course my father, being a soldier, liked me to learn the use of the sword and rapier, though I might never have occasion to use them, for, as I was his only son, he did not want me to go into the army. It is just as well now that I did go in for it.”
“I don’t expect it will be of much use,” Rubini said. “If the Neapolitans do not show themselves to be braver soldiers than we take them for, there will be no hand-to-hand fighting. If, on the other hand, they do stand their ground well, I do not expect we shall ever get to close quarters, for they ought to annihilate us before we could do so. Well, I long for the first trial.”
“So do I. I should think that a good deal would depend upon that. If we beat them as easily as I have heard my father say they were beaten near Rome in 1848, it is hardly likely that they will make much stand afterwards. It is not only the effect it will have on the Neapolitan troops, but on the people. We cannot expect that the Sicilians will join us in considerable number until we have won a battle, and we want them to make a good show. Even the most cowardly troops can hardly help fighting when they are twenty to one; but if we are able to make a fair show of force, the enemy may lose heart, even if the greater part of our men are only poorly armed peasants.”
To most of those who started from Genoa, fully prepared to sacrifice their lives in the cause they regarded as sacred, the success that had attended their passage, and enabled them to disembark without the loss of a man, seemed a presage of further good fortune, and they now marched forward with the buoyant confidence, that in itself goes a long way to ensure success; the thought that there were fifty thousand Neapolitan troops in the island, and that General Lanza had at Palermo twenty-eight thousand, in no way overawed them, and the news that a strong body of the enemy had advanced through Calatafimi to meet them was regarded with satisfaction.
Calatafimi stood in the heart of the mountains, where the roads from Palermo, Marsala and Trapani met; and on such ground the disproportion of numbers would be of less importance than it would be in the plain, for the cavalry of the enemy would not be able to act with effect. The ground, too, as they learned from peasants, was covered with ruins of buildings erected by Saracens, Spaniards, and Normans, and was therefore admirably suited for irregular warfare. Garibaldi, with a few of his staff, went forward to reconnoitre the position. He decided that his own followers should make a direct attack, while the new levies, working among the hills, should open fire on the Neapolitan flanks and charge down upon them as opportunity offered.