Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

"'By a fluke, of course,' replied Pivett; adding, in a loud voice, 'Silence!' to check the rising retort of the other.

"As Shakespeare has it--

"'That in the captain's but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is rank blasphemy.'

And so it came to pass that whenever Ernslie ventured to remonstrate, his oppressor invariably sent him to his room under arrest, and twice--a great insult to a sergeant--to the guard-house; but though the charges of mutiny and insubordination were always 'quashed' by the colonel, poor Ernslie felt, as he told me, 'that he was a doomed man, and safe to come to grief some day, for the sergeant-major had sworn an oath to smash him!'

"His son Philip, a private in the troop, saw and felt all this. The lad's smothered hatred and fear of the sergeant-major were great; but he did his duty well and steadily, and contrived to elude notice. Ernslie was proud of his handsome boy, and thanked heaven in the inmost recesses of his heart when the war was over in the Crimea, for there father and son had ridden side by side in the famous charge of the Heavy Brigade, and both had escaped almost scatheless; but when we were ordered to India, to stem with our swords the great tide of the terrible mutiny, the father's anxieties were revived again.

"When our transport was off the Cape de Verd Islands, Ernslie came to my cabin in great distress, to announce that his wife had just died. I knew that the poor woman had been ailing for some time past, and the sickness incident to the rough weather we encountered put an end to her sufferings, and she died in the arms of her son, for her husband was with his watch on deck, and the sergeant-major would not permit him to go below.

"She had died at daybreak, and by noon that day the body, swathed in her bedding, and lashed round with spun-yarn, lay on a grating to leeward, with a twenty-pound shot at the feet, and a Union Jack spread over it. By sound of trumpet, our men fell into their ranks, and, like the sailors, all stood bare-headed, silent, and grave, for a funeral at sea is the most sad and solemn of all. There was a heavy breeze at the time, and the ship was flying before it with her courses and head-sails only, and the bitter spray swept over us in drenching showers.

"The adjutant read the burial service. At a given signal the grating was lifted, and the body vanished with a splash under the ship's counter. Close by me stood Sergeant Ernslie and his son. Clutching the mizen shrouds with one hand, and Philip by the other, he bent his pale face over the quarter, as if to give a farewell glance at the corpse; but it was gone--gone for ever!

"Ernslie was barely forty; but now he looked quite old and haggard, and his hair was streaked with gray. He saw Pivett standing near him, as the men were dismissed, and passing forward or below; and as if he felt and knew that the original cause of enmity had passed away, he held forth his hand, and said, in a choking voice, for grief had softened his heart--

"'You'll shake hands with me now, sergeant-major, won't you?'

"But Matthew Pivett answered only by a scowl, and crossed to the windward side of the deck. So even by the side of that vast and uncouth grave their hatred was not quenched; and I had twice to interfere for Ernslie's protection before our transport ran up the Hooghly, and landed us at Calcutta, from whence the river steamers took us up country to Allahabad, where our remount awaited us, and we took the field at once, under Brigadier-General R----.

"If Ernslie's tormentor spared his son, it must have been through some lingering regard for the dead mother, or some soft memory of the love he once bore her, and Ernslie was thankful that Philip escaped, for the lad was passionate and resentful, and had vowed to his father in secret that he would 'yet serve out the sergeant-major.'

"One morning, long before daybreak, we were on the march towards the province of Ajmir, where a noted rebel, Hossein Ali, was at the head of a great force. We had endured the most unparalleled heat; for days the sky had been as a sheet of heated brass above our heads, and the cracked and baked earth as molten iron under foot. Cases of sunstroke had been incessant, and many of our horses perished on the march.

"On this morning our thirst was excessive, for the tanks of a temple on which we had relied for water had become dry in the night, and the _bheesties_, or water-carriers, attached to the regiment, had deserted to Hossein Ali, and most of us were without liquid of any kind in our canteens.

"Among others situated thus was Sergeant Ernslie, who had been on patrol duty until the last moment. His son Philip was the orderly of the colonel, and while that officer's horse was getting a drink, he had contrived to fill his canteen from the bucket, and held it invitingly to Ernslie, just as the corps filed past, for the colonel had not yet mounted. Agonized as he was with thirst, to resist the temptation was impossible; so Ernslie galloped to where his son stood, a hundred yards distant or so, near the hut of palm-leaves which had formed the colonel's quarters.

"'To your troop, Sergeant Ernslie! back to your troop, sir!' cried the sergeant-major, in a voice of thunder.

"Ernslie heard the voice of his enemy, but still rode towards his son, and took a long draught from his canteen before turning his horse and galloping back to his troop.

"'How dare you leave the ranks when on the line of march?' resumed Pivett, heedless in his fury that this was interfering with _me_. 'Fall in with the quarter guard!' he added, in his most bullying tone; 'and consider yourself under arrest!'

"'I shall do neither one nor the other,' replied Ernslie, trembling with passion. 'I am under the orders of the captain of the troop--not yours. Keep your own place, or, by heaven, I shall make you!'

"And in his just anger, Ernslie was rash enough to shake his sword with the point towards Pivett--an unmistakable threat. So the colonel was compelled to place him under arrest, in the face of the whole regiment.

"'At last you have fixed me, sergeant-major!' said he, calmly, but bitterly, as he sheathed his sword, and turned to the rear; 'but if you look for your true character, you will find it in the "Military Dictionary."'

"'Likely enough; but under what head? Discipline?'

"'No. Tyrant! See how that is defined!'

"The sergeant-major did look, and saw that Colonel James therein defines, 'Petty tyrants--a low, grovelling set of beings, who, without one spark of real courage within themselves, execute the orders of usurped or strained authority with brutal rigour;' and as he read on Pivett grew pale with rage.

"At the first halt of the brigade, a general court-martial, of which I was the junior member, sat, by order of General R----. An example was wanted; so Ernslie was reduced to the ranks.

"Our parade next morning was a gloomy one, as we formed a hollow square of close columns of regiments, near the ruins of a great Hindoo temple. The sun was yet below the horizon, and in the dim, cold light, the face of Ernslie looked pale and ghastly as he was marched into the square, a prisoner, between two armed troopers, one of whom, with execrable taste, the sergeant-major had contrived should be his own son, Philip.

"The sergeant was nervous in bearing and restless in eye; but his mind seemed to be turned inward. He was thinking, perhaps, of the terrors of the day at Balaclava, of the dead wife he had committed to the deep, or of the boy who stood scheming revenge by his side; but it was not until he felt the penknife of the trumpet-major ripping the worthily-won chevrons from his sleeve that a groan escaped his lips, a flush crossed his haggard face, and his soul seemed to die within him.

"Then he slunk to the rear of his troop, a broken and degraded man. Philip's dark eyes were full of fire, and, if a glance could have slain, the career of Matthew Pivett had ended there.

"We all felt for the sergeant, and knew that in the vindication of discipline he had been made a victim; but that night the Queen lost a good soldier, for Ernslie was absent from roll-call--he had disappeared without a trace, and the sergeant-major openly declared his belief that he had deserted to the rebel Sepoys, under Hossein Ali.

"The truth was, though we knew it not at the time, that Ernslie, when wandering alone and unarmed near our camp, communing with himself in a storm of grief and misery, had actually been waylaid and carried off by some of Hossein's scouting Sepoys, who by that time were tired of slaughtering and torturing the white Feringhees. They spared him, and discovering somehow that he had once been a _golandazee_, or gunner, they chained him naked to a field-piece, and kept him to assist in working their cannon against us in Kotah, the place which we were on the march to besiege and storm.

"So poor Anthony Ernslie's name was further disgraced by being scored down as a deserter in the regimental books.

"The forces which we accompanied, under General R----, consisted of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, H.M. 72nd Highlanders, 83rd and 95th Regiments, together with the 13th Bengal Native Infantry, a corps which had not yet revolted, but was sorely mistrusted.

"The enemy in Kotah consisted entirely of mutineers, but chiefly those of the 72nd Bengal Infantry, whose scarlet coats were faced with yellow, exactly like those of the 72nd Highlanders, now advancing against them; and we considered it a curious coincidence that two regiments bearing the same number should meet in mortal conflict.

"Our march was a severe one; each of our horses had not less than twenty stone weight to carry, irrespective of forage, and yet there was not a sore back or a broken girth either in our ranks or in those of the 8th Hussars, when, after traversing a mountainous but fertile and well-watered district, we came in sight of Kotah (which had been the seat of a Rajpoot-rajah), on the east bank of the Chumbul. It is a large town, girt by massive walls, defended by bastions and deep ditches cut out of the solid rock. Its entrances were all protected by double gateways.

"Both strong and stately looked the fortified town, when, under the scorching blaze of an Indian sun, and a hot, red sky, amid which the hungry vultures floated, we saw it and the palace of the rajah, with all its lofty white turrets, the roofs of bazaars and temples, crowning a steep slope that was covered by teak, tamarind, and date palm trees, all of lovely green. In the foreground lay a vast lake, with the superb temple of Jugmandul, a mass of snow-white marble, rising in its centre, its peristyles and domes reflected downward in the deep and dark-blue water.

"The rajah had fled. In his palace Hossein Ali, an ex-_kote-havildar_, or pay-sergeant of the revolted 72nd B.N.I., reigned supreme; and its marble courts and chambers were yet stained by the blood of our women, children, and other defenceless people, who had been slain therein, after enduring indignities and torments that maddened those who came, like us, to avenge them; and, full of the memories of those deeds, with the other horrors of Cawnpore and Delhi to inflame us, we pushed the siege with relentless vigour, though Hossein's men, with seventy pieces of cannon, gave us quite enough to do, and our sappers worked in vain to undermine the enormous walls.

"Night and day, amid slaughter, wounds, sunstroke, and cholera, we pounded away at each other with the big guns. Officers and men worked side by side at them and in the trenches, aiding or covering the sappers in their scheme of a mine, till we were all as black as the Pandies with gunpowder, dust, and grime, and till the once gay uniform of ours had given place to flannel jerseys and rags; our helmets to linen puggerees, or solar-hats; our pantaloons to cotton knickerbockers and Cawnpore boots; and even those who had been the greatest dandies among us were seldom seen without a scrubby beard, a shovel, a revolver, and Chinshura cheroot. In short, we were more like diggers or desperadoes than her Britannic Majesty's dragoons.

"With a working party composed of men of various corps, one morning, before daybreak, I was assisting the sappers at the mine, while the enemy, with shot, shell, and rockets, did all they could to retard or dislodge us. It was a horrid place, I remember, encumbered by dead camels and horses--yea, and men, too, in every stage of decomposition, where the gorged vultures hovered lazily among fallen ruins and whitening bones.

"'Jack Sepoy thinks it no sin now to bite the greased cartridge--the scoundrel!' said one of my men, as a bullet broke the shovel in his hand.

"'Sin--as little as to cut the throats of our wives and children in cold blood!' added another, with a fierce oath.

"'Fighting for glory is a fine thing,' said young Philip Ernslie, resting on his pickaxe; 'but fighting for a shilling per day, with a penny extra for beer, is a different affair.'

"'But we are fighting for revenge, Phil,' said a soldier, whose wife and children had perished at Meerut.

"'True,' replied Ernslie, through his clenched teeth; 'and times there are, by Jove! when even revenge may be just and holy!'

"'Silence!' growled Sergeant-Major Pivett, still in pursuance of his feud.

"'Down, men--down!' cried I, 'for here comes a shell.'

"Humming through the air, but, oddly enough, _not_ whistling, a ten-inch shell fell near me, and, with a thud, half sunk into the soil. Strange to say, it was without a fuze; the touch-hole was simply plugged by a common cork, in which a half-scorched quill-pen was stuck. After lying flat on our faces, and watching it uneasily for some time, and all fearing a snare, or the explosion of some poisonous stuff, I ventured to roll it over with a shovel, and found that it was empty, or quite unloaded. Pivett, who certainly did not lack courage, sprang forward, and, extracting the cork from the fuze-hole, found a scrap of paper attached to it, and on the scrap was written, with ink that seemed to have been composed of gunpowder and water, these words:--

"'_I am a prisoner in Kotah. The work of the sappers is useless, for where they are mining the rock is solid. There are seventy guns in this place, and I am chained to one of the seventeen in the right bastion. If the front gate is blown up, the place may be carried at the point of the bayonet, as the way beyond is quite open._

"'A. ERNSLIE, _private, H.M. --th Dragoons_.'

"'I knew that fellow had deserted to the enemy!' growled the sergeant-major.

"'Silence,' said I, 'and do not be unjust in your hatred.'

"'It's a message-shell, sir, a message-shell, and fired by my father, poor man. Heaven help him!--he is in the hands of the Sepoys!' exclaimed young Ernslie, whom, with the shell and note, I took at once to the general, whose tent was by the margin of the lake.

"This information caused the staff at once to abandon the idea of a mine, and all our energies were now bent against the great gate.

"Though the junior regiment of the division, the 72nd, or Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders, were ordered to furnish three hundred men for a storming party, and at two o'clock on the morning of the 30th of March the grand assault was to be made, while we--the cavalry--were in our saddles, to cover, and if possible assist in the attack, when the great gate was forced.

"'My brave lads, rouse!' I heard the adjutant of the Highlanders cry in the dark; 'quit your dog's sleep--half-dozing and half-waking--and fall in. Fall in, stormers!'

"And while the warning pipes blew loud and shrill, cheerfully they formed by companies, those brave Albany Highlanders; and stately, indeed, looked their grenadiers, with their tall plumed bonnets and royal Stuart tartan; for the highland regiments during the mutiny had not time to adopt Indian clothing, and went at the Pandies in their kilts and ostrich feathers, just as their forefathers did at Madras and Assaye.

"Silently they crossed the river in the dark, where the graceful date palms and the luxuriant mango topes cast a deeper shadow than the starry night upon the water. Then, quitting their boats, they crept close to the great outer wall of Kotah; but so great was the delay in blowing up the gate, that day broke, the Highlanders were seen, and for hours we sat in our saddles helplessly, and saw the enemy pouring shot and shell upon them from the same bastion where we knew poor Tony Ernslie was chained to a gun.

"Suddenly there was a dreadful shock; the wall of the city seemed to open, as it rent and gaped, a blinding cloud of dust and stones ascended into the air, and a shower of wooden splinters, the fragments of the great gate, flew far and wide, as our mine blew the barrier up.

"A mingled shout of 'Scotland for ever!' the old Waterloo war-cry of the Black Watch and the Greys, broke from the Highlanders* again and again, as they rushed in with fixed bayonets, driving back the terrified Sepoys, storming bastion after bastion, and capturing two standards. The other regiments broke in at different points, and after much hard fighting Kotah was ours, and then we rode through the streets cutting down the fugitive rebels on right and left.

* See _Scotsman_ of 28th of May, 1858.

"Philip Ernslie and a few of his comrades made straight for the bastion indicated in his father's note. It was deserted by all save a few dead or dying Sepoys; but a more terrible spectacle awaited the searchers.

"Stripped nude, and nailed to the wall of the bastion by the hands and feet, hung the body of Anthony Ernslie, minus nose and ears, and otherwise horribly mutilated!

"Even this appalling spectacle failed to excite the pity or soothe the hate of the malevolent Matthew Pivett (but we were well used to scenes of horror and barbarity during the mutiny), for he audibly expressed a conviction 'that Ernslie had met his just reward for deserting to the enemy.'

"'I shall make you eat your words before the going down of the sun, by the God who made us, I shall!' said Philip Ernslie, in a low, husky voice, heard only by the sergeant-major, who shrunk back, so impressed was he by the fierce and resolute aspect of the lad, by the deep concentrated loathing that glared in his eyes, making his lips ashy pale, and causing every muscle to quiver; but this emotion was unseen by others, and his threat was unheard, luckily, for if Pivett could have found a witness, he would at once have made young Ernslie prisoner on a charge of insubordination, as he really dreaded his vengeance.

"About dark that evening the sergeant-major was returning from the bungalow of the colonel, where, with the adjutant, he had been preparing lists of casualties and for our march on the morrow, when we and the 8th Hussars were to surround a village that was full of fugitive mutineers. The day had been one of toil, of strife, and heat; now the atmosphere was steamy and moist, and Pivett was enjoying by anticipation the comforts of a hearty supper and a cool sleep in his tent, the sides of which his _tatty-wetter_ had, no doubt, soused well with cold water.

"To reach the cavalry camp he had to pass through a ravine, not far from the town wall--a narrow place, full of prickly and thorny shrubs, where the beautiful silky jungle grass grew in such wild luxuriance that, in some instances, it was almost breast-high, and where the perfume of the many aromatic plants came floating on the puffs of warm air.

"Traversing the narrow path on foot, with his sword under his arm, he was suddenly confronted in the dusk by Philip Ernslie, who resolutely barred the way. He, too, had his sword by his side, but in each hand he had a holster pistol. His features were pale as those of a corpse, and might have passed for such, but for the nervous twitching of his lips as he spoke.

"'You know, Matthew Pivett, for what purpose I am here?'

"'Mutiny and murder, likely enough,' replied Pivett, who was a stern and resolute man. 'Give up those pistols--fall back, and return to your quarters, or I shall cut you down.'

"'Draw your sword but one inch from its sheath, and I shall send a bullet through your brain!' replied Philip, cocking one of the pistols. 'You maddened my poor father by your systematic tyranny for years; you had him reduced and degraded, and driven desperate from among us. You wronged his memory this morning, and taunted even his mutilated remains----'

"'Scoundrel! what then? Would you dare to murder me?' exclaimed the undaunted sergeant-major.

"'No, you shall have a chance for your life. Oh, Matthew Pivett, I have long looked for an opportunity like this, when I might meet you face to face; so take your choice of these pistols, for, by the heaven that hears us, you or I must lie dead here to-night!'

"As Philip spoke solemnly and sternly, with clenched teeth and flashing eyes, he thrust a pistol into Pivett's hand.

"'Quarter guard!' shouted Pivett, as he made a resolute attempt to grasp the throat of Ernslie, who thrust him back with the barrel of the other pistol, crying--

"'Stand back, sergeant-major, and keep your distance, or I shall shoot you down like the dog you are!'

"Pivett, who now saw there was no resource but to fight, withdrew a pace or two, and fired straight at Ernslie's head. The ball whistled through the white puggeree, or cap, and slightly grazed his left ear. He gave a ghastly smile, and said--

"'You were rather quick, sergeant-major, but now it is my turn!'

"He levelled his pistol, with a deadly, triumphant, and vindictive aim, straight at the glaring eyes of the agitated Pivett; but the percussion cap must have been defective--it snapped and hung fire.

"'Seize this mutinous rascal!' cried the sergeant-major to a patrol who, on hearing the explosion of the first pistol, came galloping up; and Philip was instantly made prisoner by a party of the 8th Hussars, who had seen the whole situation.

"Another court-martial sat by break of day, in the palace of the Rajah of Kotah, and, wan and haggard, after a sleepless night, fettered by handcuffs, and looking the picture of misery, Philip Ernslie stood before it, charged with violating the forty-first clause of the second section of the Articles of War, which ordain that 'any officer or soldier who shall strike a superior, or use any violence against him, shall, if an officer, suffer death, and if a soldier, death, transportation, or such other punishment as by a general court-martial shall be awarded.'

"The majority of the members of the court were strangers to the lad and his story, and the father's alleged spirit of insubordination, manifested when on the march to Kotah, was now brought forward in the prosecution of the son. The court was but an epitome of the greater world, where accusation is condemnation. Nothing is so fallible as human judgment, but nothing so pitiless.

"As captain of Philip's troop, I gave evidence of all I knew, and of the good characters borne by father and son; but, after the brief proceedings terminated, and the court was cleared for the consideration of the verdict and sentence, I knew too well what they would of necessity be.

"That evening the chaplain visited the prisoner, who was confined in one of the vaults of the palace, to announce that on the following morning he was to--DIE!

"He spent nearly the whole night with the poor lad, who was quite resigned, and so calm and prepared for his fate that he begged to be left alone for a little sleep before the appointed time; and when the provost-marshal came at gun-fire, he found Philip Ernslie in a profound slumber, with a horse-cloak spread over him, and his head resting on a bundle of straw.

"Never did we parade with more reluctance than on that 31st of March at dawn, and all the corps in and about Kotah, with some others that had marched in during the night, got under arms to witness the execution. It was a lovely Indian morning. The beams of the sun shone redly on the white marble domes and carved minarets of Kotah, and on the turrets of the rajah's stately palace.

"The place where we paraded was a hollow between two hills that were covered with beautiful groves of the peepul-palm and teakwood, and flocks of wild peacocks and green paroquets flew hither and thither as we were massed in columns round the spot, where an open grave was yawning, and where the guard of the provost-marshal--twelve men and a sergeant--stood with their rifles loaded.

"Every face was expressive of intense anxiety to have the whole affair over, and many were very pale.

"Accompanied by the chaplain of the cavalry brigade, who wore a surplice over his black uniform surtout, and praying very devoutly with his fettered hands clasped before him, Philip Ernslie, guarded by an escort, came slowly into the square of regiments, and stopped midway between the firing party and that premature grave that was so soon to receive him. His face was frightfully pale; he looked at that black hole, which yawned so horribly amid the green turf, calmly and steadily, and something of a smile--but not of bravado or derision--stole over his features.

"My heart bled for the poor lad; but I was immensely relieved when our colonel said, in a whisper, as he passed me--

"'The adjutant-general has a reprieve from General R---- in his pocket, so there will be no execution.'

"'Thank heaven!' I exclaimed, fervently.

"'We are but acting out a solemn farce.'

"'For the sake of effect and discipline?'

"'Exactly.'

"'And the sentence, colonel----'

"'Will be commuted to transportation for life.'

"It was a human existence blighted for ever, any way; but now I could look on with more composure.

"The fetters were removed from Philip's hands. He was ordered to take off his cap and listen respectfully to the sentence of the court; and he seemed to do so mechanically, as one in a dream.

"The proceedings of the tribunal were briefly noted, the enormity of the crime forcibly adverted to, and then came the doom--that he was to be shot to death!

"The young man's usually haughty and handsome face was wistful and sad in expression now. He merely bowed his head in meek assent, and in a weak voice asked leave to shake hands with me and some of his comrades. They came forth from the ranks as he named them, and wrung his cold and clammy fingers in silence, and I could see that the eyes of these men were moist with tears; yet they were brave fellows all, and had charged by my side at Inkermann and Balaclava.

"Philip next asked for the sergeant-major, that he might shake hands even with him, and so die at peace with all mankind. But Pivett was absent from parade that morning, and lay seriously ill in his tent, for Asiatic cholera had fastened upon him.

"Philip then turned to the chaplain to signify that he was ready, and, kneeling near his grave, had his eyes covered by a handkerchief.

"The whole scene was now worked up to its utmost intensity, and many officers, who knew not of the reprieve, had taken off their caps to utter a silent prayer for the spirit that was so soon to appear before its Maker.

"The silence was profound, and we heard only the Chumbal rushing on its course to meet the Jumna, till the voice of the provost-marshal rang in the air--

"'Firing-party--ready!' and softly the rifles were cocked.

"'As you were!' cried the adjutant-general, with a bright expression of face; 'half-cock, and order arms! Prisoner, stand up! you are, I rejoice to say, mercifully reprieved.'

"Philip Ernslie did not hear the words apparently, for his head sank forward on his breast.

"The provost-marshal took his hand to assist him to rise; but the poor lad fell forward on his face, dead--stone dead--without a wound. The sudden revulsion of feeling had killed him.

"So he was actually buried in that unconsecrated ground, beneath the shadow of the walls of Kotah; but, ere we marched next day, another grave was formed beside him.

"It contained the remains of Sergeant-Major Pivett; and, during a long career of service, I have met with few events which created so profound a sensation among the troops as this little tragedy."

THE STORY OF RAPHAEL VELDA.

On an evening in the September of 1860, some excitement was caused among the inhabitants of the secluded town of Oppido in Calabria Ultra, when the gleam of arms announced the approach of regular troops. The dealers in pottery and silk, in wine and oil, and the manufacturers of gloves and stockings from the delicate filaments of the shell-fish named the _pinna marina_, and the water-carrier by the well, conferred together on this unusual circumstance; the wandering _pifferari_ paused in their strains before the shrine of the Madonna; and the rustics of a more doubtful character--to wit, the armed and lawless _carbonari_ and mountaineers, the brigands, with their sugar-loaf hats, velveteen jackets, and sandalled feet--looked forth from the dense forests and coverts wherein they lurked, defying alike the anathemas of the Archbishop of Reggio and the powers of the High Court there, and thought the time was near to inspect their guns and stilettoes, and set their wives to abandon the distaff for the bullet-mould, as none knew on what errand those troops had come, or what might ensue ere long, and strange things were expected, for Mazzini and "The Liberator" had been busy with their manifestoes; even the Fata Morgana had been showing strange optical delusions of late in the Bay of Reggio and the Straits of Messina.

The battle of Aspromonte had been fought in their vicinity during the preceding month.

Garibaldi, as all the world knows, intent on raising an insurrection in Hungary, had placed himself at the head of a body of Sicilian volunteers, in the forest district of Ficuzza, twenty miles from Palermo, and, by a hasty and ill-advised movement, he landed these men from two steamers on the Calabrian shore, where, on the mountain plateau of Aspromonte--one of the highest of the Calabrian hills, rising immediately behind the town of Oppido--he was attacked by the Royal Italian troops, under Colonel Pallavacino. He fell, wounded by a musket-shot in the ankle, while all his people were surrounded and made prisoners.

Military executions followed on many, though "The Liberator," for his great services in the cause of Italian independence, was never brought to trial; and now the young grass was sprouting above the earthy mounds, and round the rude little crosses that marked where the dead lay in their lonely graves on the slope of the Apennines.

For two noted brigands who had accompanied him, named Agostino Velda and Giuseppe Rivarola, rewards were offered at that time in vain.

The excitement in Oppido was in no way lessened when the sound of bugles came on the evening wind, and ere long the 3rd regiment of Bersaglieri, or Italian Rifles, in the service of Victor Emanuel, with their plumed hats and quaint uniforms, marched into the town, and halted before the _Albergo del Leon d'Oro_, where the colours were lodged, and the lieutenant-colonel commanding took up his quarters.

The soldiers were placed in an empty monastery; a guard was mounted there, and also at the _albergo_; and then it began to be whispered about in the market-place and _cafés_ that the Bersaglieri were to remain there until a captain arrived from Reggio with some special instructions for the colonel, Vincenzo il Conte Manfredi, of whom we shall hear more anon.

These rumours were unpleasantly connected with a Bersagliere named Agostino Velda--the same Velda who had followed General Garibaldi, and who had been brought in with the quarter-guard as a prisoner, and was now in a cell of the monastery, heavily ironed, and under the strictest surveillance.

Among the Bersaglieri of Colonel Manfredi were two soldiers of the name of Velda--the prisoner Agostino, and his son Raphael, a youth of little more than twenty years, who bore a character as high and unblemished as that of his father was degraded and low, dissipated and vile. Yet the father and son were both eminently handsome men, and both had fought bravely--the former on the fields of Goïto and Novara, and the latter at Montebello and Solferino; but latterly to many crimes and breaches of military law, Agostino had added that of desertion and consorting with brigands, among whom he narrowly escaped an assassination in which he became involved; and a notice of this event found its way even into the _Times_.

He had thrown aside his uniform, adopted the well-known costume of the brigands--a gaily-embroidered jacket, a high hat, with broad, flaunting ribbon, and long leathern gaiters--and, armed with a rifle and six-barrelled revolver, made his lurking-place among the mountains near Naples.

Not far from Acerra--an episcopal city in the province of Lavoro--for a year prior to the affair of Aspromonte, he had taken up his residence with a formidable bandit and his wife, with whom he lived, concealed in a vault, the fragment of some ruined castle or villa of the old days of Roman Naples.

There they might have resided long enough together, and made perilous the road to Rome, but for the sum of two thousand ducats which had been put upon the head of Agostino Velda after Garibaldi's defeat, and which proved too much for a friendship such as theirs.

One day, after a close pursuit, his _padrona_ assured him that he might safely issue forth, as the police had disappeared; but immediately on Velda raising the trap-door, which was covered with turf and branches to conceal their den, he was struck to the earth by a blow from an axe, dealt full on his head by a most unsparing hand.

Assisted by his wife, the _padrona_ dragged the body to a ditch close by, and then, stabbing her to death, he departed at once to Naples, where he claimed the reward offered for Agostino Velda, whom he accused of killing the woman. But Velda was not dead--such men are hard to kill; he was simply stunned, grievously wounded, and made hideous by the blood that covered him.

He managed to crawl to the nearest house of the National Guard, to whom he told his story, denouncing, as his accomplice, the _padrona_, who was seized and shot, as the reward of his crimes; while he (Velda) was sent back under escort to the 3rd Bersaglieri, then on their march to Calabria, to overawe the brigands in that mountain region, and he was now under sentence and waiting the result of his trial, the papers connected with which had been forwarded for approval to General Enrico Cialdini, who, in the subsequent year, was appointed leader of the entire Italian army, and "Viceroy of Naples, with full power to repress brigandage."

The proceedings of the court-martial by which the father had been tried were actually engrossed by the hand of his son, who was the clerk to the regiment, and he knew all the papers contained, save the sentence, which was known to the sworn members of the court alone; but he could not doubt the tenor of it.

Shame and gloom clouded the dark and handsome face of the young man, and this dejection was held sacred by his comrades, though it has been said that Colonel Manfredi--a man of weak and vicious character, one, moreover, who was fierce, reckless, and dissipated--was cruel enough, on more than one occasion, to taunt the innocent son with the errors of the guilty father.

The sun was verging towards the watery horizon of the gulf of Gioja, and the shadows of the Apennines were falling far athwart the deep and wooded valleys that lie eastward of Oppido, when, full of sad, terrible, and bitter thoughts, the younger Velda left the little city, and, after pausing once or twice to cross himself before the little lamp-lighted Madonnas at the street corners, hurried towards a spot which was familiar to him, for he was by birth a Calabrian, and like his father before him had first seen light among those very mountains where Aspromonte had been fought.

Under the circumstances in which he was placed, the young soldier gazed sadly on the scenes of his infancy--on the forest paths and secluded places where he had been led by the hand of his mother, who had perished of fever and fright after the battle of Novara.

Raphael Velda walked rapidly onward for a few miles through a district that was rich in fruit trees, where the lemon and citron, the fig, the vine, and the orange were growing, till he reached a region that was rocky and wild, and where the majestic oaks and pines of that extensive tract known as the Forest of La Sila, celebrated even by Virgil in the twelfth book of the "Æneid," cast a deepening shadow over the way he pursued, and where the goat, the buffalo, and the wild black swine appeared at times amid the solitude.

Brightly streamed the evening sun through the openings in the forest while Raphael, with unerring steps, trod a path that had been familiar to him in boyhood, and at last reached the place he sought.

It was a cavern in the gray basaltic rocks; but the entrance, known only to the initiated, was carefully concealed by the hand of nature, for the wild fig-trees, the vines, and other luxuriant creepers completely screened it from the casual eye.

"Oh, Francesca, my love! my love! what an abode for _you_!" muttered the soldier as he saw it. But the place was silent as the grave; the hum of insect life, and the gurgle of a mountain rivulet, whose course was hidden by the verdure, alone met his ear. "Francesca, my betrothed! the wife of my heart!"

Passing through the screen of leaves, Raphael Velda came to a barrier of wood, wedged between the walls of rock, and on this he knocked with a resolute hand, though his heart was throbbing with anxiety.

After a pause, a sound most unpleasantly like the click of a gunlock met his quickened ear, and he hastily knocked again.

"_Chi è la?_ (Who is there?)" demanded a stern voice.

"'Tis I, good Giuseppe--a friend."

The wooden barrier sharply revolved on its centre, and within the cavern, half seen in ruddy sunlight, and half sunk in dark brown shadow, appeared the picturesque figure of a man whose attire and bearing proclaimed him to be a Calabrian brigand. Strong and athletic in form, erect and dignified in carriage, the lines of his dark face and his keen, wild eyes declared him to possess an ardent and fiery spirit; but his garments were tattered and miserable, his beard was long, and its natural raven blackness was becoming silvered by time.

His sash contained a brace of pistols and a horn-hafted knife, and in his hands was a long double-barrelled rifle, which was cocked and held menacingly, for the naturally ferocious expression of his face deepened when he saw the hostile attire of his visitor.

"A friend!" he exclaimed scornfully. "Do the friends of Giuseppe Rivarola wear the uniform of the king's Bersaglieri?"

"True, I am a soldier, Giuseppe--a soldier of the king; yet am I not the less your friend," replied Velda gently.

"Back, I say! I seek not your friendship, boy, and I want not your blood! Yet," continued the robber, wrathfully, "how am I to save my own if I permit you to return alive after having dared to track me to my hiding-place?"

As Rivarola spoke he involuntarily raised the musket to his right shoulder.

"Hold, Giuseppe Rivarola!" cried his visitor. "Have you quite forgotten me? I am Raphael, the son of Agostino Velda."

The brigand uttered a cry, threw down his musket, and springing forward, with all that volubility of gesture and violent declamation which proclaims the Calabrian a genuine child of nature--a rough and impetuous mountaineer--he embraced the young man, took him in his arms and led him into his hiding-place.

It was indeed a squalid den, and lighted only by a few dim rays of the fading sunshine which stole in through fissures in the basalt. In a recess a little Madonna of coarse clay was fixed to the wall of rock, and the flame of a brass oil-lamp was flickering before it. Beneath lay a bed or rather a pallet, the neat arrangements of which indicated the presence of a female hand.

Outside this lay a couch of leaves and deer-skins whereon doubtless old Rivarola snatched his few hours of repose. Some vessels of coarse pottery, an iron pot, a bullet-mould, a powder-flask, and other similar _et cetera_, made up the furniture; and Raphael looked round him with a saddened and anxious eye.

"Francesca?" said he, inquiringly.

"She has gone to vespers, and to market at Oppido. The poor child requires other comforts than my gun can procure her on these bleak mountain sides, or even on the highway, for few men travel now without an escort of the Carabinieri. I am in hopes that she may be employed as a _zitella_--(a girl who will make herself useful)--by the good sisters of the Benedictine convent--God and His Mother bless them!" continued the brigand, lifting off his old battered hat with reverence. "The sisters pity her for her own sake, though they execrate me as one of the godless Garibaldini. Once that our Francesca is safe within their walls, I shall go farther west, among the mountains, where some of the men of Aspromonte are still lurking, though heaven knows that to leave this place for that may be only _noi cadiamo da Scilli in Cariddi_," he added, using the old classic proverb. "But while talking of my own affairs I forget yours. What of your father, my boy?"

"He has been taken by the National Guard, and is now with us in Oppido; but under sentence of death, as I too justly fear it must be," replied Raphael, in a broken voice.

"Rebellion, desertion, treason, and robbery! What else could be the penalty of these but death! He will be shot, of course, by the Bersaglieri."

"Alas!"

"Yet you will continue to wear their uniform?" said the old brigand, his moustaches quivering with anger.

"I follow the dictates of my conscience."

"Conscience!" replied the other, grimly. "I had such a thing about me once; but now---- Well! well!"

"Are they safe for Francesca, or safe for you, these evening errands into Oppido?"

"She goes in as the twilight falls, and always returns after dark, when none can see the way she takes. But our perils will be increased now that your precious Bersaglieri are so close at hand."

"They are increased, Giuseppe. A list of persons to be captured, and shot if found with arms in their hands, or who prove unable to give a satisfactory account of themselves, has been given by Cialdini to the Conte Manfredi, and your name is the _first_ on that fatal roll, of which I made a copy no later than yesterday, by the Conte's order."

The outlaw only laughed at this, and his white teeth glistened under his dark moustache.

"They will never discover my retreat," said he.

"Oh, be not too sure of that."

"It has served me ever since that fatal day at Aspromonte."

"You are wrong. Either Francesca has been watched or some one has betrayed you."

"None could betray me. My secret is known to Francesca and myself alone," replied the outlaw, confidently.

"A clue to your hiding-place is in the hands of the Conte Manfredi, and ere to-morrow--yea, to-night, perhaps--a cordon of riflemen will be around it. _Povero amico_! I swear to you that this is the truth!"

"And my Francesca!" exclaimed Rivarola, mournfully, as he clasped his brown hands.

"She is here--here at last!" cried the young man, as a girl sprang into the cavern; but on beholding his uniform she uttered a low cry of terror, and shrank behind her father.

Her figure was slender and _petite_, yet she was full-bosomed and beautifully rounded. Her eyes were dark, but bright and sparkling, and softened in expression by their wonderfully long lashes, which, like her hair, were black as jet. Her attire was poor, but plain and neat, even to being piquante and pretty. Her scarlet bodice was handsomely embroidered, and her habit-shirt, like the square fold of linen that shaded her face, was white as snow, and contrasted well with the almost olive hue of her complexion.

"_O padre mio_! I have been pursued!" she exclaimed.

"By whom?" asked Rivarola, starting to his musket.

"An officer of the Bersaglieri; but I escaped him in the forest. Oh, my father! my father! and a Bersagliere is here before me!"

"Raphael Velda, your betrothed!" said the young man, taking off his plumed hat, and coming forward from the shade which had partly concealed him.

Uttering a soft exclamation of joy, mingled with astonishment, the girl rushed into his arms, and he covered her face with kisses, showering them on her brow, her lips and eyes, even on her neck, where hung her only ornament, a little crucifix of brass.

"_Ne sono estatico!_ (I am in ecstasies!)" the young soldier continued to murmur, as he gazed upon the upturned face that lay upon his fringe epaulette, and so near his own flushed cheek.

"Oh, what happiness!" responded the girl. "I am beside myself with joy! Raphael, Raphael, speak to me!"

"Thou art loved by every one, my child," said the old brigand, who made no attempt to check the free emotions of the lovers, but turned away sadly, and leaned upon his long musket.

"Oh, Francesca, many may--nay, must have loved you; but none as poor Raphael Velda does," said the lover.

"If ever we are parted, judging by what I have suffered already, the _wrench_ will be terrible! Francesca will die!" murmured the girl.

"No female society ever afforded me the delight that yours does, and were we to be together for days and days, instead of a few short stolen hours, I would never weary of looking into your sweet eyes. How often in camp and on the march, when weary and listless, I have longed for your beloved shoulder to lay my head upon and go to sleep, though I fear your presence would put all sleep to flight."

"Oh, Raphael, when absent from you I seem only to endure existence. All time seems lost that is not spent with you."

"And one of our officers pursued you, Francesca?" asked Raphael, after a pause.

"Yes, my beloved--from the gate of Oppido, along the highway, and close up to the forest, where I eluded him by lurking behind an ilex tree, while he passed on."

"Is he old or young?"

"A man of some fifty years, with long gray moustaches curled up to his ears."

"_Dio!_ 'tis the colonel--the Conte Manfredi! the greatest _roué_, in all Naples!"

"Never mind--soldiers are used to run after pretty girls. You have escaped him, and if he comes hither my gun will do the rest--there will be promotion for the major," said Rivarola, calmly.

But the handsome face of Velda became troubled and clouded.

His love for Francesca was deep and passionate; yet as a soldier could he marry and make her a camp-follower--the jest, perhaps, of his comrades, the prey, perchance, of such a man as the conte?--she, with all her purity and beauty. A soldier, could he with safety wed the daughter of a brigand--an outlaw--one of the Garibaldini? She had been seen and pursued by his _roué_ colonel also, to complicate and make matters more dubious, perilous, and difficult.

"Be one of us--throw your allegiance to the winds, and take to the mountains," the brigand would have suggested; but Raphael was loyal and good, and mourned the lost lives of Rivarola and his doomed father.

But now the sun was set, and he knew that he must soon return to quarters, as he had only leave till midnight, and, taking his gun, Rivarola prepared to accompany him a little distance on the way.

The lovers separated, with an arrangement for their meeting on the morrow, and from the screen of leaves that hid her wretched home the poor girl, with eyes half-blinded by tears, watched their figures retiring through the forest; but scarcely had they been gone ten minutes when both came rushing back to her. The face of Raphael was deadly pale; that of Rivarola inflamed by passion, and in his eyes there sparkled a dangerous light.

"Conceal yourself, my child. A party of the Bersaglieri are in the forest, searching, doubtless, for _me_, so I must fly; but I shall leave your betrothed with you. Surely," continued Rivarola, "he will be able to protect you from his own comrades, at least. I will fire a shot to lure these men after me, and away from this vicinity; so, if you hear it, my children, be not alarmed. To heaven and your love I trust her, Raphael. Adieu!"

He pressed the terrified girl almost convulsively to his breast, sprang up the rocks with his musket slung behind him, and disappeared, while Raphael led Francesca into the cavern and closed the door.

The task of soothing her was a delightful one; but then came the reflection--what was he to do? To remain there with her was impossible, as, ere midnight, he would have to report himself to the quarter-guard, and could he leave her alone--alone in the wild forest?

No! She should return with him to Oppido, and seek at the Benedictine convent that shelter which would not be denied her. This was soon resolved on, and, though about to leave the cavern, perhaps for ever, she reverentially trimmed anew the votive lamp before the little Madonna, while Raphael stole for half a mile or so into the forest, to assure himself that his comrades were gone. This proved to be the case, as they had heard the distant random shot of Rivarola, and, following it, had disappeared.

"Heaven be praised!" said Raphael, aloud; "the road is clear for her and me."

He was returning to the hiding-place, when a shrill cry--almost a shriek--from Francesca made him spring forward with all the speed he could exert; and he saw with dismay that the barrier of wood and screen of leaves were alike thrown down, and that an armed man stood within them.

All that his heart had foreboded of evil--the climax of every vague apprehension to which the soul of Raphael Velda had been a prey--was reached when he beheld his beautiful little Francesca struggling to free herself from the grasp of her visitor--his colonel, the Conte Manfredi!

Of all men in Italy, the man from whom he had most cause to fear--the man who held in his hands, perhaps, the life of his father, Agostino Velda, and his own life as a consorter with outlaws--had now tracked out Francesca as a new prey! This was but an example probably, of "how oft the power to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done."

Raphael knew that the conte was a man without scruple or conscience, possessed of vast wealth, of high rank, and a position which enabled him always to _crush_ with success all who opposed his wishes, however vile or cruel those wishes might be; and Raphael was but a poor Bersagliere, whose father was a convicted brigand.

All this foreknowledge rushed upon the mind of Raphael, and for a moment he was paralyzed with dismay; but a moment only.

The next saw him tear Francesca from the grasp of the conte, whom he thrust without much ceremony aside.

In an instant the blade of the colonel's sword glittered in his hand.

"_In guardia, signore! in guardia!_" cried he, in a voice that was tremulous with rage; while Raphael, who had no other weapon than the short sword-bayonet of the Bersagliere, promptly drew it to defend himself, and therewith he parried one or two thrusts that were aimed at his breast. As yet the colonel had not recognized him, for the cavern was dark, or only lit by the tiny votive lamp that flickered above the humble couch of Francesca. "Ha, Signore Spadaccino!" said Manfredi, mockingly, "I'll be through your body this time."