"Per Baccho!" said the captain—who, though a little man, was armed with a prodigious sabre, and wore a most extravagant pair of moustachios—"per Baccho! signor," he continued, with a most bland Sicilian smile, "it would have been a particular favour had the general sent you off to us last night: by this time we should have doubled Spartivento; and, as there is some word of a French line-of-battle ship being up the Gulf of Tarento, his valour who commands the _Amphion_ will be impatient to be joined by his Majesty’s galley _Sea-Horse_.—Lieutenant, I’ll trouble you for the maccaroons.—We shall have some rough weather before evening, and these double-banked galleys ship every sea that strikes them.—The muffins? with pleasure, signor.—And, truly, one is safer anchored close by the Tower of the Lantern, than exposed to a lee shore and all the damnable currents that run round Spartivento in the evening. But, believe me, signor, that his Majesty’s galley _Sea-Horse_—Boy! pass the word for more coffee." "Si Signor Capitano," replied a little olive-cheeked urchin in shirt and trousers, who vanished with the silver coffee-pot. "Considering the beauty of the morning, and the unclouded splendour of the sun, I trust," said I, "with all due submission to your better judgment, that you may prove a false prophet." "Impossible, signor!" replied the Sicilian; who was doing ample justice to all the good things before him. "I have sailed in—an egg, thank you—in his Majesty’s galleys, for forty years, and know every shoal, current, rock and sign of the Italian seas, better than the boasted Palinurus of old—Better? said I. Bah! I hold him to be an arrant blockhead, and no seaman, to resign his helm to Signor Morpheus; whose ’Stygian dew’ I believe to have been a big-bellied flask of most potent Gioja or French brandy." "But Palinurus was an accursed heathen, like his master, misnamed the ’pious Æneas;’ and having no saint to patronize him, could expect nothing else than mishaps," said one of the lieutenants. "Right, Vinoni," replied the captain; "but we, sailors of his Majesty of Sicily, are the Madonna’s peculiar care. Faugh! a tarantella in the cream-pot and fire-flies in the marmalade. Yes, Signor Dundas," he continued, resuming his former theme, "there is a regular hurricane gathering; though from what point I cannot quite determine. Last night the yellow moon rose above the Calabrian hills, surrounded by a luminous halo; a sure sign of a tough gale, which Madonna avert: what is worse, we may have it in our teeth, blowing right a-head, before we round yonder Capo del Armi. On our voyage from Palermo, yesterday, as we passed through the Lipari Isles, they were covered by a white vapour; a sure sign of a north-east wind: but though the shore lies on our lee, his Majesty’s galley can always use her sweeps, and give it a wide berth."