The Royal party were for the most part most woe-begone. Like true Southerners, the ladies of them at any rate were mighty poor sailors, and counted on being ill before they reached the ship's side. And probably nothing would have persuaded them to trust themselves on boats on such a day, though the wind was no more than fresh, except that they looked every instant for the French or a rebel army to loom out of the darkness--a consummation which I dare swear the most of our men devoutly hoped, for retreats were not to their taste, but if a better appearance could be put on it by its being effected in the teeth of a hostile force, it would be a victory of a sort. But there was no such luck, and the utmost they had to dread was a wetting. Donna Rusidda, being a Sicilian, and accustomed to sail from Palermo on visits to her uncle or the Court, was, as it proved, a first-rate sailor. I think Will had an inkling of this, for he took mighty good care that she should not go in the barge with him; and, had she been as the other ladies, she would have been at once prostrate and a proper object for his attentions. The Admiral was dressed with extreme care in full Court rig, in order to bring off the Royal Family with even more punctilio than had been observed at their State visit after our victory at the Nile. Although it was dark, the Royal standard was up at the main, as the illustrious exiles to the other part of their own kingdom mounted the broad gangway which had been let down for them. I should have said that My Lady was in attendance on Her Majesty, and Sir William talking to the King upon the only two subjects which at that moment for Ferdinand the First of the Two Sicilies and Fourth of something else possessed the smallest interest--some treasure which he had suddenly recollected, without which he positively refused to quit the Bay of Naples, and the prospects of sport at a hunting box in the interior, a little south of Palermo. As the lamps at the top of the gangway shone on them, Sir William's tall spare figure and snow-white hair contrasted strongly with the King's big powerful frame, heavy jaws and grizzled whiskers. It tickled my boyish fancy that this worthy and complacent pair of husbands should both have such very large noses--though Ferdinand's was more of the Roman, and Sir William's of the door-knocker type. Their beautiful wives were talking busily as they came on board. Her Majesty proved not a very good sailor, if it is fair to say that anything could be proved in the weather which we were about to encounter. The Admiral was violently sick during its continuance. But I thought Her Majesty not above the ordinary as a sailor, though her courage and dignity made her hold out long after other women would have given in. I judge that My Lady was pressing the conversation, it being well known how potent an antidote for the sea-sickness it is to divert the attention.