"Most excellent captain!" cried the thieves, with one voice. "Viva Francatripa!"
"Silence all, comrades," said Francatripa; "and you, signor," he added, addressing himself to me, "I thank you for giving my lieutenant this rough lesson to treat my prisoners better. But inform me, circumstantially, on your honour, who you are, whence you have come, where you are bound, and what is your business among these mountains?"
"I am an officer on the Sicilian staff, bearing despatches from the commanding officer at Crotona to General Sir John Stuart at Scylla. I trust my papers will be restored me; as they can be of no use to you, sir, and the service of King Ferdinand may suffer by their detention."
"Madonna keep his most sacred majesty!" said the robber chief, uncovering: "your horse and baggage shall be restored to you, and all letters addressed to the good Cavaliere Stuardo, the friend of Naples. Signor, we war not with the soldier, unless in arms against us: like our own, his profession is a poor one, and shame fall on the hand that would pilfer his hard-earned ducats—the wages of sweat, toil, and blood. But the gentleman who accompanies you? By the star of heaven! a knight of Malta! This is sacrilege! Pardon, Signor Cavaliere, this outrage by my people: one for which, believe me, on my word of honour, as a free Calabrian, I am in no way to blame. Gaetano! restore to these gentlemen their swords."
Unbinding Castelermo himself, he ordered our horses to be instantly led up to us.
"Gaspare!" he exclaimed, while grasping a pistol, "thou accursed, deformed Judas, thou piece of an ass! I would this instant send a bullet through your brain, had I another to supply your place: for, truly, there is not in all Italy another such subtle serpent and compound of mischief, to whom I could delegate my troublesome command when absent. But keep out of my sight till morning, Messerino Esop! Signori, he has the eyes of Argus, and is worth his hump in gold to me, so that I could ill spare him. Meanwhile, to make all the amends in my power, this night you shall sup with me, and to-morrow pursue your journey. Please to step this way, gentlemen, and we shall see what my cook has in preparation for us."
He led us behind a lofty mass of the ruins, where heavy green laurels and clusters of ivy and vine overhung the marble blocks and fragments of fluted columns, which yet remained in their original position. A whole roebuck was roasting and sputtering before a wood fire, which cast its red and varying glare on the shattered temple, the waving foliage, the glancing arms, and fierce swart visages of our captors; whose well-known bandit costume completed the striking effect of the scene.
A beetle-browed and bare-legged rogue, clad only in yellow breeches and a blue shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up, superintended the cooking; while the contents of a hamper (taken probably from the carriage we had seen some hours before) were spread upon the turf: light pastries, fruit, and a few flasks of continental wine. After posting a few well-accoutred scouts on the neighbouring roads and eminences, Francatripa sent away his band to join the main body in the forest, where several hundred wild spirits served under him. After seeing them off, in a manner which was a burlesque on military order, this formidable chief—who afterwards fought so many severe battles with the French, and whose name was soon to become like that of Marco Sciarra in Italy—rejoined us. I had then an opportunity of recognising in him one of the mutilators of the poor tanner (mentioned in volume first), and I also remembered his face as one I had often seen in the fashionable gaming-houses of Messina.
He was an eminently handsome man, between thirty and forty years of age; and being closely shaved he had rather a more civilized aspect than his rough, whiskered, and bearded associates. Though to us polite and courteous in the extreme, to his band he acted the furious and swaggering bandit: stern firmness and sullen ferocity alone seemed to keep their mutinous spirits in check, and they quailed beneath his sparkling eye whenever it turned on them.
He was habited in one of those richly-laced scarlet uniforms, which Queen Caroline sent from Palermo to Benincasa, the miller of Sora, and all the brigand chiefs of those provinces; and on his breast shone the star and enamelled cross of St. Constantine: the gift of the same politic princess, who endeavoured to prop the tottering throne of her husband by the support of the brave banditti of southern Naples; just as the Venetians, in 1590, courted the aid of the chivalric Sciarra and his followers against the Grand Duke of Tuscany. A plume of white ostrich feathers, clasped by a golden band and diamond madonna, drooped from his broad hat over his right shoulder, imparting a peculiar grace to his figure. His belt sustained a very handsome sword, poniard, and pistols; which, with a short rifle, completed the arms and accoutrements of this gallant robber: his air and aspect were very different from those of the desperado who, under his name, usually figured in the accounts published in the Neapolitan and Sicilian cities.