"Save the zitella!" cried Santugo. Giacomo bore her on board the scampavia, in the stern sheets of which Santugo deposited his cousin, and brandishing his sword aloft, gave a reckless shout of triumph. It was the last I saw of them. Enveloped in murky clouds, the moon sank behind the mountains of Isola, and the scene became suddenly involved in gloom. The assailants were too close upon me, to permit my following the Visconte’s example, by springing on board; and I was compelled to stand on the defensive, slashed one across the face with my sabre, he fell shrieking into the water, where the relentless Giacomo despatched him with the boat hook. I was soon hemmed in on every side; and sinking beneath a shower of blows, was beaten to the ground. The last sound I heard was a yell of defiance and rage, as the broad oars dipped into the water, and the swift scampavia shot away like an arrow from the shore. Supposing me slain, Luigi thought only of saving Francesca; and while his twenty rowers pulled bravely, the soldiers gave the baffled pursuers a volley from their firelocks. The Calabrian peasants never went abroad without their cartridge boxes, poniards, and rifles. The latter were in instant requisition; and a skirmish ensued, in which several were wounded on both sides before the fugitives were beyond range of musket shot. Reckless and bold as he was by nature, perhaps Santugo would not have dared to commit such an outrage against his religion, and the prejudices of the Italian people, at any other time. But the power of the Church, shaken by the recent destruction of the (misnamed) holy office, was feeble; and such was the disorderly state of the country, then filled with armed banditti who made it the scene of perpetual rapine and warfare, that the authority of the law, at all times weak, was completely neutralized. The rank, power and wealth of Santugo’s family, and his interest with Carolina and the court of Palermo, emboldened this wild young noble to plunge into what was esteemed by the superstitious and bigoted Calabrians as a deed replete with sacrilege and horror, and which could not fail to draw down the utmost vengeance of the Church and Heaven itself upon the unhappy perpetrator and his impious followers. Indeed, a short time afterwards the Papal malison was duly thundered forth against Santugo and myself, and published in the columns of the Diario di Roma; consigning us to the warm protection of his most satanic majesty. For that I cared less than for the broken head and sore bones which were my share of this adventure. I had also the pleasant prospect of my name becoming a standing quiz at every mess in the Mediterranean when the story appeared in the _Gazzetta Britannica_—a gossiping, military, patriotic paper published during our occupation of Sicily, and the only public journal in the island: where the press is (or was) under the severest restrictions.