The English Captain received this intelligence as might be expected; and unpleasant as it was, after putting various questions to the vice-governatore and receiving the answers, he was obliged, unwillingly enough, to believe it all. He had brought his official report in his pocket; and as the conversation proceeded, he covertly tore it into fragments so small that even a Mahommedan would reject them as not large enough to write the word "Allah" on.
"It's d--d lucky, Griffin, that letter didn't get to Leghorn this morning," he said, after a long pause. "Nelson would have Bronted me famously had he got it! Yet I never believed half as devoutly in the twenty-nine articles as--"
"I believe there are thirty-nine of them, Captain Cuffe," modestly put in Griffin.
"Well, thirty-nine, if you will--what signifies ten, more or less, in such matters? A man is ordered to believe them all, if there were a hundred. But I never believed in them as devoutly as I believed in the destruction of that infernal picaroon. My faith is unsettled for life!"
Griffin offered a few words of condolence, but he was also too much mortified to be very able to administer consolation. Andrea Barrofaldi, understanding the state of the case, now interposed with his courtesies, and the two officers were invited to share his bachelor's breakfast. What followed, in consequence of this visit, and the communications to which it gave rise, will appear in the course of the narrative.
CHAPTER XIII.
"If ever you have looked on better days,
If ever been where bells have knolled to church;
If ever sat at any good man's feast!
If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear,
And know what 'tis to pity, and be pitied,
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be."
SHAKESPEARE.
It is now necessary to advance the time, and to transfer the scene of our tale to another, but not a distant, part of the same sea. Let the reader fancy himself standing at the mouth of a large bay of some sixteen or eighteen miles in diameter, in nearly every direction; though the shores must be indented with advancing promontories and receding curvatures, while the depth of the whole might possibly a little exceed the greatest width. He will then occupy the spot of which we wish to present to him one of the fairest panoramas of earth. On his right stands a high, rocky island of dark tufa, rendered gay, amid all its magnificent formations, by smiling vineyards and teeming villages, and interesting by ruins that commemorate events as remote as the Caesars. A narrow passage of the blue Mediterranean separates this island from a bold cape on the main, whence follows a succession of picturesque, village-clad heights and valleys, relieved by scenery equally bold and soft, and adorned by the monkish habitations called in the language of the country Camaldolis, until we reach a small city which stands on a plain that rises above the water between one and two hundred feet, on a base of tufa, and the houses of which extend to the very verge of the dizzy cliffs that limit its extent on the north. The plain itself is like a hive, with its dwellings and scenes of life, while the heights behind it teem with cottages and the signs of human labor. Quitting this smiling part of the coast, we reach a point, always following the circuit of the bay, where the hills or heights tower into ragged mountains, which stretch their pointed peaks upward to some six or seven thousand feet toward the clouds, having sides now wild with precipices and ravines, now picturesque with shooting-towers, hamlets, monasteries, and bridle-paths; and bases dotted, or rather lined, with towns and villages. Here the mountain formation quits the margin of the bay, following the coast southward or running into the interior of the country; and the shore, sweeping round to the north and west, offers a glimpse into a background of broad plain ere it meets a high, insulated, conical mountain, which properly forms the head of the coast indentation. The human eye never beheld a more affluent scene of houses, cities, villages, vineyards, and country residences than was presented by the broad breast of this isolated mountain, passing which a wider view is obtained of the rich plain that seems to lie behind it, bounded as it is by a wall of a distant and mysterious-looking, yet bold range of the Apennines. Returning to the shore, which now begins to incline more westwardly, we come to another swell of tufa, which has all the characteristic fertility and abruptness of that peculiar formation, a vast and populous town of near half a million of souls being seated, in nearly equal parts, on the limits of the plain and along the margin of the water, or on the hill-sides, climbing to their summits. From this point the northern side of the bay is a confused mass of villages, villas, ruins, palaces, and vines, until we reach its extremity, a low promontory, like its opposite neighbor. A small island comes next, a sort of natural sentinel; then the coast sweeps northward into another and a smaller bay, rich to satiety with relics of the past, terminating at a point some miles further seaward, with a high, reddish, sandy bluff, which almost claims to be a mountain. After this we see two more islands lying westward, one of which is flat, fertile, and more populous, as is said, than any other part of Europe of the same extent; while the other is a glorious combination of pointed mountains, thronged towns, fertile valleys, castles, country houses, and the wrecks of long-dormant volcanoes, thrown together in a grand yet winning confusion. If the reader will to this description add a shore that has scarce a foot that is not interesting with some lore of the past, extending from yesterday into the darkest recesses of history, give life to the water-view with a fleet of little latine-rigged craft, rendered more picturesque by an occasional ship, dot the bay with countless boats of fishermen, and send up a wreath of smoke from the summit of the cone-like mountain that forms the head of the bay, he will get an outline of all that strikes the eye as the stranger approaches Naples from the sea.
The zephyr was again blowing, and the daily fleet of sparanaras, or undecked feluccas, that passes every morning at this season, from the south shore to the capital, and returns at this hour, was stretching out from under Vesuvius; some looking up as high as Massa; others heading toward Sorrento or Vico or Persano, and many keeping more before the wind, toward Castel-à-Mare, or the landings in that neighborhood. The breeze was getting to be so fresh that the fishermen were beginning to pull in toward the land, breaking up their lines, which in some places had extended nearly a league, and this, too, with the boats lying within speaking distance of each other. The head of the bay, indeed, was alive with craft moving in different directions, while a large fleet of English, Russians, Neapolitans, and Turks, composed of two-deckers, frigates, and sloops, lay at their anchors in front of the town. On board of one of the largest of the former was flying the flag of a rear-admiral at the mizzen, the symbol of the commander's rank. A corvette alone was under-way. She had left the anchorage an hour before, and, with studding-sails on her starboard side, was stretching diagonally across the glorious bay, apparently heading toward the passage between Capri and the Point of Campanella, bound to Sicily. This ship might easily have weathered the island; but her commander, an easy sort of person, chose to make a fair wind of it from the start, and he thought, by hugging the coast, he might possibly benefit by the land-breeze during the night, trusting to the zephyr that was then blowing to carry him across the Gulf of Salerno. A frigate, too, shot out of the fleet, under her staysails, as soon as the westerly wind made; but she had dropped an anchor under-foot, and seemed to wait some preparation, or orders, before taking her departure; her captain being at that moment on board the flag-ship, on duty with the rear-admiral. This was the Proserpine thirty-six, Captain Cuffe, a vessel and an officer that are already both acquaintances of the reader. About an hour before the present scene opens, Captain Cuffe, in fact, had been called on board the Foudroyant by signal, where he had found a small, sallow-looking, slightly-built man, with his right arm wanting, pacing the deck of the fore-cabin, impatient for his appearance.