In October, 1848, I went over to the Island of Capri, some twenty miles from Naples, to enjoy a rustic festival. Our party consisted of some Englishmen and some Italians; the latter, being in the service of the government, had a fixed limit to their leave of absence. When the morning arrived that was appointed for the departure of our Italian friends, we accompanied them to the shore, where they made their arrangements for the passage back to the main-land. There was a strong west-and-by-south wind roaring round the island, and the sea looked dangerous; but, in Naples, where there is no career for a young man out of government employ, an official must not trifle with his post. The preparations, therefore, for the launching of the boat went on. It was one of those wide-bottomed boats, commonly used in the port of Naples, upon which the stranger starts out for a moonlight row to Posilippo, or betakes himself with his portmanteau and his carpet-bag, or with his wife and her pill-box full of a few things to the steamer. Such boats are not made for riding on a stormy sea. The men preparing to put out that morning were our two friends the officials, and two boatmen. One of the passengers was hailed by the captain of a good strong bark, upon the point of starting. “Come with us, Raffaelluccio; it will be madness to sail out in that cockle-shell, through such a sea!” Raffaelluccio, a delicate youth, replied that he was no coward. He had come in the boat, and might go back in the boat, with the Madonna’s blessing. The other passenger was a stout, black-bearded man, and the two boatmen were a youth and a weather-beaten sailor from the port of Naples. The little harbor at Capri is so sheltered from certain winds, that there is often a deceptive smoothness in its waters. It was only by looking out to sea that one detected, on that wild October morning, how the waters writhed under the torture of the wind. Far as the eye could reach the sea was covered with those smaller storm waves, called, in the phrase of the country, _pecore_; these, as the day advanced, swelled into great billows, _cavalloni_, which came rolling on upon our little island, and dashed violently against the coast of Massa and Sorrento.