168

LIFE OF COLONEL MACEEONI.

bank, and then fields, with mulberry trees, and a luxuriant >crop of hemp above six feet high. Palpitating in the expec- Itation of a brace of bullets through my back,—at length, Iheard what I took to be the signal for my fate,—I distinctlyheard—■“ un poco piu avante ”—“ a little further on.” Notime was to be lost; so suddenly springing from the road, ]

across the ditch, and over the bank,^I made into the hemp, j

which quite concealed me. Sudden and simultaneous with jmy evasion was the shout of rage and vituperative termsaddressed to me by the three ruffians. In quick succession,too, came three musket balls whizzing through the hemp;while I, impeded but screened by that friendly shelter, pro-ceeded with all my speed at right angles from the road.Upon getting through the field of hemp, I climbed part ofthe way up a tree, and could well perceive that I was notpursued, as all the dense mass of plants that had so befriendedme was motionless. Taking then a wider sweep, I walkedparallel to the high road, until I reached the suburbs nearCapo di Chino, where I entered a little tavern, made adelicious meal, then stretched upon my wooden bench, I jslept most soundly till the evening. j

Thus hemp, that useful plant, which has cut short the lastpious ejaculations of so many thousand repentant sinners, all j“ called to glory” at the gallows, preserved my life. Butas the pious “ Quarterly Review” assures its readers, thisfriendly respite given me by the hemp was only in thefashion of a cat’s forbearance in the killing of a mouse. I j

was then let go; but still hemp, hemp, says John Wilson j

Croker, is sure to cause my “ exit,” 1

The night of my return to Naples I supped and slept at j

the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, British Consul at Naples. ]

The next morning he accompanied me to the Prefect in j

chief, thenotoriousGuido Baldi, whose accursed name I have i

7 |had occasion to mention when speaking of the capitulation