With a little ostentation, the lancers loaded their pistols before me, and in five minutes I was _en route_ for Seminara, with a file on each side and the corporal riding behind. I often looked back: Compere’s brigade were riding in sections towards the hills, with all their lance heads and bright accoutrements glittering in the sun; while the fanfare of the trumpets, the clash of the cymbals, and the roll of the kettle-drums, rang in the woods of Palmi. They were moving towards Scylla, and my heart swelled when I thought of my helplessness and of poor Bianca; the hope of Regnier accepting my parole alone sustained me: but that hope was doomed to be cruelly disappointed. By the way we passed many ghastly objects, which announced the commencement of that savage war of extermination which General Manhes afterwards prosecuted in the Calabrias. Many armed peasantry had been shot like beasts of prey, wherever the French fell in with them; and their bodies hung on the trees we passed under, while their grisly heads were stuck on poles by the roadside. Some were in iron cages, and, reduced to bare skulls, grinned through the rusty ribs like spectres through barred helmets; while the birds of prey, screaming and flapping their wings over them, increased the gloomy effect such objects must necessarily have upon one’s spirits. The morning was balmy and beautiful, the sun hot and bright, the sky cloudless and of the palest azure; light fleecy vapour floated along the distant horizon, where the sea lay gleaming in green and azure: but never had I a more unpleasant ride than that from Compere’s bivouac. I often looked round me, in the desperate hope that a sudden attack of robbers or loyal paesani would set me free; though warned by the corporal that on the least appearance of an attempt at rescue he would shoot me dead. But Regnier had effectually cleared and scoured the country, and we passed no living being, save an old Basilian pilgrim, travelling barefooted, perhaps on his way to the Eternal City; and once, in the distance, a solitary bandit on the look-out, perched on the summit of a rock like a lonely heron. The bells of the mountain goats, the hum of the bee or the flap of the wild bird’s wing, and the dull tramp of our horses on the grassy way, alone broke the silence. My escort were solemn and taciturn Poles, who never addressed a word either to me or to each other; so my gloomy cogitations were uninterrupted till we entered Seminara, when the scene changed.