Within three months, however, he was called from his retreat. Secret agents brought word that “something could be done” in Sicily, where for a long time Mazzinians had been preparing a revolt. It needed, they said, but Garibaldi’s presence to redeem the island from Bourbon misrule. He could not resist the temptation. Trusty lieutenants of his had collected arms and ammunition, hired two steamers and enrolled volunteers. At Genoa, where these preparations were making, nobody, except the government officials, was ignorant of their purpose. The government, however, pretended not to see. Cavour could not openly abet an expedition against a power with which Piedmont was not at war; neither did he wish to hinder an expedition for whose success he and all Italian patriots prayed. So he discreetly closed his eyes. On the night of May 5, 1860, Garibaldi and 1067 followers embarked on their two steamers near Genoa and vanished into the darkness. For a week thereafter Europe wondered whither they were bound,--whether against the Papal States or Naples; then the telegraph reported that they had landed at Marsala, on the morning of May 11, just in time to escape two Neapolitan cruisers which had been watching for them. From that moment, day by day, with increasing astonishment, the world followed the progress of Garibaldi and his Thousand. No achievement like theirs has been chronicled in many centuries. They set out, a thousand filibusters, scantily equipped and undrilled, to free an island of two and a half million inhabitants, an island guarded by an army fifty thousand strong, with forts and garrisons in all its ports, and having quick communication with Naples, where the Bourbon King had six million more subjects from whom to recruit his forces. Grant that the Sicilians fervently sympathized with Garibaldi, yet they were too wary to commit themselves before they had indications that he would win; grant that the Bourbon troops were half-hearted and ludicrously superstitious,--many of them believed that the Garibaldians were wizards, bullet-proof,--yet they had been trained to fight, they were well-armed, and by their numbers alone were formidable. That they would run away could not be assumed by the little band of liberators, any more than Childe Roland could suppose that the grim monsters who threatened his advance would vanish when he upon his slug-horn blew.