Our head-quarters were established at St. Eufemio; while Macleod, with three thousand men, laid siege to Crotona, and Hoste, with the Adriatic fleet of gun-boats, blockaded it by sea. Colonel Oswald was despatched to invest Scylla, with orders to storm the castle of Monteleone on his way. These were the only strongholds of importance possessed by Regnier in the lower province. Immediately on his retreat, the famous Capo-bandito Francatripa, with his ferocious horde issued from the forest of St. Eufemio, and carried by storm a battlemented and palisadoed house at the place called the Sauveria; where an unfortunate party of the 23d French light infantry, who formed its garrison, had been abandoned by Regnier in his flight. After a gallant resistance, the garrison were all cruelly massacred by these blood-thirsty patriots; even their little trumpeter, a boy only twelve years of age, perished beneath their poniards. Such a sample of Italian savagism called forth the indignation of our soldiers, who were well aware that by the courtesy of war the little band deserved very different treatment; but Francatripa excused himself on the plea that it was but a part of that cruel system of reprisals maintained on both sides. When the embarkation of prisoners, the landing of cannon and stores, the billetting of sick and wounded, the burial of the dead, and all the bustle succeeding the battle were over, I thought of paying a visit to my friends at the villa d’Alfieri. There could not be a better time; the Visconte was at Crotona with his regiment, and I should have Bianca to myself. My billet was at an inn of St. Eufemio, called "Il Concha d’Oro," from its sign, the Golden Shell. It was kept by a worthy bustling little Italian, Maestro Matteo Buzzone: who, in truth, was not ill named; his paunch being one of the first amplitude. I was enjoying a cigar and a decanter of iced Malvasia from the classic isles of Lipari, at an open lattice. Opposite, stood the house of the Signor Podesta, and I amused myself for some time by attempting to engage his daughter, a dark-eyed and red-cheeked damsel, in a flirtation: but my efforts were vain; though she appeared every moment at the window—watering flowers, arranging and disarranging the sunshade, bowing to a passer by, or what not.