Although we must pass all this, one marking episode in Garibaldi’s life at that time ought not to be forgotten. His ships had been cast away in a storm. He succeeded in swimming to shore, but his dearest comrades perished. He felt lonely, dispirited, and though he was soon to command another cruiser, the excitements of war could no longer dissipate his melancholy. “In short,” he says, in a characteristic passage of his Autobiography, “I had need of a human being to love me immediately,--to have one near without whom existence was growing intolerable to me. Although not old, I understood men well enough to know how hard it is to find a true friend. A woman? Yes, a woman; for I always deemed her the most perfect of creatures, and--whatever may be said--amongst women it is infinitely easier to find a loving heart. I was pacing the quarter-deck, ruminating my dismal thoughts, and, after reasonings of all kinds, I decided finally to seek a woman, to draw me out of my tiresome and unbearable condition. I cast a casual glance towards the Barra: that was the name of a rather high hill at the entrance of the lagune, toward the south, on which were visible some simple and picturesque habitations. There, with the aid of the glass, I discovered a young woman. I had myself set ashore in her direction. I disembarked, and, going towards the house where was the object of my expedition, I had not reached her before I met a man of the place, whom I had known at the beginning of our stay. He asked me to take coffee in his house. We entered, and the first person who met my gaze was she whose appearance had caused me to come ashore. It was Anita, the mother of my sons, the companion of my life in good and evil fortune,--the woman whose courage I have so often envied. We both remained rapt and speechless, reciprocally looking at each other, like two persons who do not meet for the first time, and who seek in the features one of the other something to assist recollection. At last I greeted her and said, ‘Thou must be mine.’ I spoke but little Portuguese, and uttered these hardy words in Italian. However, I was magnetic in my presumption. I had drawn a knot, sealed a compact, which death alone could break.” A few nights later Garibaldi carried Anita off to his ship, clandestinely as it appears, and they were wedded when they reached another port. She was a companion matching his ideal: she shared his wild fortunes and hardships; she was an indefatigable horsewoman, a dead-shot, and upon occasion she could touch off a cannon.