While he spoke, a frigate hove in sight: she was clearing a point of land, over which her topsails were glittering in the light of the setting sun; which was then gilding the glassy waters of the gulf, and reddening, with its last rays, the surrounding shore. It was the _Amphion_: her bellying canvass shone white as snow, as she rounded the promontory, and the evening wind unrolled the bright scarlet standard at her mizzen peak: that standard which a Briton never hails with such joyous pride as when it waves in the breeze of a foreign clime. Gracefully the beautiful frigate came on, with the white foam curling under her bows and rolling past her swelling sides, from which thirty-six pieces of cannon protruded through the port-holes; and we could discern the long flush line of her gun-deck crowded with men. A smart American ship, which had probably been blown up the gulf by the late storm, passed at a short distance on the opposite tack, showing her stripes and stars. Scarcely had she cleared the _Amphion’s_ quarter, when a puff of white smoke curled from it, and a gun-shot whistled across her fore-foot, skimming the water beyond. The Americans immediately took this rough hint, and lowered their topsails to our flag—a good old custom of ocean homage, which of late years has been disused. "For what reason has the frigate fired on the poor merchantman?" asked the cardinal. I acquainted him with the ancient etiquette, by which Britain compelled the flags of foreign nations to do homage on her wide watery dominions; and a smile of gratified pride lighted up the glistening eyes of the listener. The frigate would be close off Canne, when she crossed the gulf on the other tack; and the cardinal observed that Catanio would have a boat waiting on the beach after dusk. It was a tempting offer, and a most tantalizing sight to behold within musket-shot a British ship, for whose commander I had important despatches; but to abandon poor Francesca, when I was so anxious to convey her to a place of safety, and to present her in person to Luigi, was a project I could not relinquish. The cardinal read the expression of doubt which my face betrayed. "Do you not wish to return to your friends and your duty?" he asked. "Anxiously," I replied; "but not without the Signora D’Alfieri, whose dispensation you so graciously requested. Permit me to reside here a few days longer—at least until it arrives—that I may convey this desolate girl to the arms of the only friends whom war and time have left her. You will thus confer another boon, which I shall long remember, though I never can repay."