CHAPTER XXII.
A CHANCE OF ESCAPE LOST.
A week slipped away: I visited Francesca every morning, and saw, with pleasure, the bloom returning to her faded cheek, and the lustre to her sunken eye: yet I spoke not of the dispensation, while there was the least chance of a miscarriage; knowing that she was too weak to stand many alternate shocks of grief and joy.
Notwithstanding the gracious manner and winning kindness and hospitality of the cardinal—who appeared to possess that charm hereditary in his family, by which he gained the hearts of all who knew him—I was impatient to deliver at Crotona the despatches with which I was entrusted; to fling aside the slovenly cassock, and don, once more, my smart uniform. I grew heartily tired of the disguise, when its novelty passed away; and bestowed many a most unpriestly malison on its ample skirt, when it impeded me in walking.
One evening Catanio came to me in a hurry, saying "his Majesty wished to see me without a moment's delay:" he was most scrupulously exact in styling him thus.
I found the cardinal seated on a lofty terrace, where he usually passed the evening, enjoying the beauty of the prospect and coolness of the air.
"Sir," said he, "a path is just opened for your escape, and you have an opportunity which may never occur again. The British ship I mentioned to you is again off the coast, and a boatman will take you on board after dusk. There are no French gun-boats in the gulf, therefore you can escape in perfect safety."
While he spoke, a frigate hove in sight: she was clearing a point of land, over which her topsails were glittering in the light of the setting sun; which was then gilding the glassy waters of the gulf, and reddening, with its last rays, the surrounding shore. It was the Amphion: her bellying canvass shone white as snow, as she rounded the promontory, and the evening wind unrolled the bright scarlet standard at her mizzen peak: that standard which a Briton never hails with such joyous pride as when it waves in the breeze of a foreign clime. Gracefully the beautiful frigate came on, with the white foam curling under her bows and rolling past her swelling sides, from which thirty-six pieces of cannon protruded through the port-holes; and we could discern the long flush line of her gun-deck crowded with men.
A smart American ship, which had probably been blown up the gulf by the late storm, passed at a short distance on the opposite tack, showing her stripes and stars. Scarcely had she cleared the Amphion's quarter, when a puff of white smoke curled from it, and a gun-shot whistled across her fore-foot, skimming the water beyond. The Americans immediately took this rough hint, and lowered their topsails to our flag—a good old custom of ocean homage, which of late years has been disused.
"For what reason has the frigate fired on the poor merchantman?" asked the cardinal.