"The fleet is unmoored, and the moment the wind comes off the land, we shall go out of the delightful harbour, where our present wants have been most amply supplied, and where every attention had been paid to us." But I am anticipating. The Governor was as good as his word, and we were soon in the thick of taking in stores and water; and as there was no hope of going out in less than two days at the earliest, the inhabitants began to organise a round of hospitalities. The very next evening, the Governor, who had recovered so far from his fright of our cannon as to have his state bed moved back from the subterranean magazine of the castle, gave a ball in our honour at his palace. The Admiral had in the afternoon paid him a state visit, accompanied by his staff. To the English it might sound a formidable undertaking to ask the officers of a whole fleet to a ball at a few hours' notice, but in Sicily it is very different. The palaces of the nobles were built, many of them, in the Middle Ages, when it was necessary to house the retainers, who were, in fact, the nobleman's army, within the walls of his town palace when he happened to be there, as much as it was necessary to house them within the walls of his castle when he was in the country on his estates. When the custom of each noble maintaining a private army died out, their palaces were naturally a great deal larger than they required for their diminished establishments, and each palace could afford to have noble suites of entertaining rooms not used at ordinary times, but ready, with a little taking off of covers, for any _fêtes_, like a ball at carnival time. As most nobles grew their own wine, they had an unlimited supply maturing in their cellars, and fruit in Sicily is as a drug in the market. There remained nothing, therefore, but for the ladies to bring out their gala dresses from their chests, and to summon all the banquet-cooks in Syracuse to the Governor's kitchen.