Mediterranean ships were slow sailers in those days, and it was not until August that they arrived and disembarked at Cephalonia--an island near to the outlet of the Gulf of Corinth, and lying due east from the Straits of Messina. There was a boisterous welcome to the generous and eloquent peer of England; but it was a welcome that showed factional discords. Only across a mile or two of water lay the Isle of Ithaca, full of vague, Homeric traditions, which under other conditions he would have been delighted to follow up; but the torturing perplexities about the distribution of moneys or ammunition, the jealousies of quarrelsome chieftains, the ugly watch over drafts and bills of exchange, and the griping exactions of local money-changers, made all Homeric fancies or memories drift away with the scuds of wind that blew athwart the Ionian seas. He battled bravely with the cumulating difficulties--sometimes maddened to regret--other times lifted to enthusiasm by the cordial greeting of such a chieftain as Mavrocordatos, or the street cheers of a band of Suliotes. So months passed, until he embarked again, in equipage of his own, with his own fittings, for Missolonghi, where final measures were to be taken. Meantime he is paying for his ships, paying for his Suliotes, paying for delays, and beset by rival chieftains for his interest, or his stimulating presence, or his more stimulating moneys. On this new but short sea venture he barely escapes capture by a Turkish frigate--is badly piloted among the rocky islets which stud the shores; suffers grievous exposure--coming at last, wearied and weakened, to a new harborage, where welcomes are vociferous, but still wofully discordant. He labors wearily to smooth the troubled waters, his old, splendid allegiance to a free and united Greece suffering grievous quakes, and doubts; and when after months of alternating turbulence and rest there seems promise of positive action, he is smitten by the fever of those low coasts--aggravated by his always wanton exposures. The attack is as sudden as a shot from a gun--under which he staggers and falls, writhing with pain, and I know not what convulsional agonies. There is undertaken an Italian regimen of cupping and leeching about the brow and temples, from which the bleeding is obstinate, and again and again renewed. But he rallies; attendants are assiduous in their care. Within a day or two he has recovered much of the old _vires vitæ_, when on a sudden there is an alarm; a band of mutinous Suliotes, arms in hand, break into his lordship’s apartments, madly urging some trumpery claim for back-pay. Whereupon Byron--showing the old savagery of his ancestors--leaps from his bed, seizes whatever weapon is at hand, and gory--with his bandaged head still trickling blood--he confronts the mutineers; his strength for the moment is all his own again, and they are cowered into submission, their yataghans clinking as they drop to the tiled flooring of his room.