"But Ferdinand had sworn the extermination of the banditti with whom he was thus obliged to treat as from one potentate to another. A certain colonel, whose name I forget, and who had heard this vow, pledged himself, if a battalion were put under his command, to bring in Vardarelli, his two brothers, and the sixty men composing his troop, bound hand and foot, and to place them in the dungeons of the Vicaria. The offer was too good to be refused; the minister of war put five hundred men at the disposal of the colonel, who started with them at once in pursuit of the outlaw. The latter was soon informed by his spies of this fresh expedition, and _he_ also made a vow, to the effect that he would cure his pursuer, once and for all, of any disposition to interfere with the Vardarelli. "He began by leading the poor colonel such a dance over hill and dale, that the unfortunate officer and his men were worn out with fatigue; then, when he saw them in the state that he wished, he caused some false intelligence to be conveyed to them at two o'clock one morning. The colonel fell into the snare, and started immediately to surprise Vardarelli, whom he was assured was in a little village at the further extremity of a narrow pass, through which only four men could pass abreast. He made such haste that he marched four leagues in two hours, and at daybreak found himself at the entrance of the pass, which, however, seemed so peculiarly well adapted for an ambuscade, that he halted his battalion, and sent on twenty men to reconnoitre. In a quarter of an hour the twenty men returned. They had not met a single living thing. The colonel hesitated no longer, and entered the defile; but, on reaching a spot about halfway through it, where the road widened out into a sort of platform surrounded by high rocks and steep precipices, a shout was suddenly heard, proceeding apparently from the clouds, and the poor colonel looking up, saw the summits of the rocks covered with brigands, who levelled their rifles at him and his soldiers. Nevertheless, he began forming up his men as well as the nature of the ground would permit, when Vardarelli himself appeared upon a projecting crag. 'Down with your arms, or you are dead men!' he shouted in a voice of thunder. The bandits repeated his summons, and the echoes repeated their voices, so that the troops, who had not made the same vow as their colonel, and who thought themselves surrounded by greatly superior numbers, cried out for quarter, in spite of the entreaties and menaces of their unfortunate commander. Then Vardarelli, without leaving his position, ordered them to pile their arms, and march to two different places which he pointed out to them. They obeyed; and Vardarelli, leaving twenty of his men in their ambush, came down with the remainder, who immediately proceeded to render the Neapolitan muskets useless (for the moment at least) by the same process which Gulliver