We climbed up numerous staircases to the pasha's house or Konak, and were shown into a huge apartment that was almostlike the open air, with large windows looking on the sea, which admitted a cool refreshing breeze. The pasha made me sit down beside him on a wide divan, and after the usual interchange of compliments, pipes, coffee, and preserves were ceremoniously handed round by numerous servants.
These preliminaries over, I desired the dragoman to request the pasha's earnest attention to what I was about to say to him. Immediately there was a general silence, all our officers, who filled one half of the room, and all the Turkish officers and secretaries, who filled the other half, pricked up their ears. My speech was very short.
We had come to Tripoli, I said, to salute the representative of our ancient ally, the Sultan of Turkey. But it was ESSENTIAL, if this friendship was to be undisturbed, that no act of hostility, direct or indirect, should be committed against the Bey of Tunis, who was also our ally, and that nothing should occur on either side to compromise friendly relations. We had just been impressing this fact at Tunis, and had come to clo the same thing at Tripoli. The perfectly amicable nature of our visit proved the value we set on maintaining friendly relations between the two Regencies, and therefore between France and the Sultan's Government.
I said no more. When I ceased speaking, the pasha, who, I need scarcely say, had preserved the most Oriental imperturbability of countenance during my oration, bowed to me, with his hand on his breast, looking fixedly at me the while. He had understood me; and I thought I saw a look of relief flash across his face. It may be that his conscience had made him fear worse things. He sent a vessel to Malta with despatches for Constantinople. I gave an account of my proceedings to M. Guizot, and also informed our ambassador to the Porte, M. de Bourqueney; but we never had to do sentry duty at Tunis again.
I put to sea at once with the squadron. The tiresome thing about our visit to Tripoli was the quarantine it entailed on us when we got back to civilised coasts. With the object of utilising the period of our enforced sequestration, I requested the governor of Malta to put health officers on board us, and to allow me to count the ten days I proposed spending under their surveillance, cruising about within sight of the island, as quarantine.
This arrangement was accepted by the English authorities, with their usual friendliness and practical good sense. The ten days were spent in drill and manoeuvres of all sorts; and then the squadron went to seek relaxation on the coasts of Sicily and Naples.
We made most agreeable stays in the ports of Syracuse, Augusta, and Messina, before going to Naples. I took advantage of them to gratify my passion for mountaineering, and made the ascent of Etna, to the description of which by Alexandre Dumas I refer my readers.
When we reached the summit, during the night, we saw the immense crater at our feet, several thousand yards round, full of fire and smoke, out of which huge stone monoliths towered, of every shade of colour, black and green and red and yellow. Then the rising sun fell on us, leaving all the horizon around us in darkness, and when at last its light had spread everywhere, save on the giant shadow of the mountain itself, we saw all Sicily and Calabria lying at our feet like a great map, with the blue sea surrounding it on every side. It was a grand and striking spectacle.
We descended the mountain rapidly, ten yards at a jump, down the crumbly pumice slopes of the Val de Bove, to Giarre, where one of the steamers of the squadron was to take us on board; and while we waited for her we took a delicious sea bath. We swam out to meet the ship, and I was much tickled by the astonishment of the commander, enthroned upon his bridge, when he heard himself hailed out of the sea by a well-known voice, telling him to stop.
The squadron happened to be at Messina on the 15th of August, the day of the Barra Festival, which takes place in honour both of the Assumption of the Virgin and of the entry of Count Roger into Messina, after he had defeated the Saracens. As far as concerned beauty and local colour, the festival, which in those particulars yields to none save that of St. Rosalia at Palermo, was most interesting. But one detail there was which filled me with horror—the sight of an immense car, dragged along by a crowd of, wild enthusiasts, laden from top to bottom with saints, virgins, and angels, represented, for the nonce, by young people of both sexes, the whole thing surmounted, at a great height above it, by a huge sun with gilded rays. So far there was nothing to complain of. But when the car moved along, the rays of the sun, by an ingenious mechanism, turned as well; and at the end of each of these rays a poor little brat, dressed like a cherub, and crowned with roses, had been hung, in a sort of fireman's belt, by its barbarous parents. The tortures of the poor little creatures, hanging thus by their middles, under a burning sun, and shaken up by every jolt the machine gave as it turned, may be imagined.