hand upon it to make it obey me, an enemy's ball struck me between the ear and the carotid arteries, passed through my neck, and laid me senseless on the deck. The remainder of the fight, which lasted an hour, was sustained manfully by Louis Carniglia, the pilot, by Pasquale Lodola, Giovanni Lamberti, Maurizio Garibaldi, and two Maltese. The Italians, therefore, fought well; but the strangers and our blacks hid themselves in the hold of the vessel. At length, fatigued by our resistance, and having a dozen men placed hors de combat, the enemy sheered off, whilst, the wind rising, our men continued to ascend the river. Although my feeling was restored and I had recovered my senses, I remained completely inert and useless during the rest of the affair. I confess that my first sensations, on opening my eyes and beginning again to live, were delightful. I may say that I had been dead and was resuscitated, so profound and deprived of every glimmer of existence was my insensibility. But let me hasten to add that this feeling of physical happiness was quickly stifled by the feeling of the situation in which we found ourselves. Mortally wounded, or nearly so, having on board no one the least acquainted with navigation or geography, I ordered the chart to be brought to me, and consulted it with my eyes covered with a veil which I believed to be that of death, and pointed with my finger to Santa Fé, on the river Parana. Except Maurice, who had been once up the Uruguay, not one of us had ever navigated in La Plata. The sailors, terrified-the Italians, I ought to say, did not share their terror, or knew how to conceal it ;-the sailors, terrified at my state and at the sight of the body of Fiorentino, fearing to be taken and considered as pirates, had consternation depicted upon their countenances, and deserted on the first occasion that presented itself. In the meanwhile, in every bark, in every canoe, in every floating trunk of a tree, they beheld an enemy's lancione sent in pursuit of them. The body of our unfortunate comrade was thrown into the river with the ceremonies customary on such occasions; for, during several days, we were not able to land anywhere. I must say that this kind of inhumation was not much to my taste, and that I felt the greater repugnance to it from the probability that I was very near partaking it. I revealed this repugnance to my dear friend Carniglia. In the midst of this communication, the verses of Foscolo recurred vividly to my mind: "A stone, a stone which may distinguish my bones from those which death sows upon the earth or in the ocean." And my poor friend wept as he promised me he would not allow me to be thrown into the water, but that he would dig me a grave, and lay me in it tenderly. But who knows, however strong might have been his inclination, that he could have kept his promise. My body would then have satisfied the voracity of some sea-wolf or some cayman of the immense Plata. I should not then have revisited Italy. I should not have fought for her! for her, the only hope of my life!-but then, likewise, I should not have seen her fall back again into shame and prostitution! Who then could have told my beloved Louis that within a year, it was I who should see him, rolled over by the breakers, disappearing in the sea, and who should search in vain for his body, in order to keep towards him the promise he had made me, to bury him in a foreign land, and to place over his grave a stone which should recommend him to the prayers of the traveller? Poor Louis! he tended me with the care of a mother during my long and painful illness, which had no other consolation than the sight of him, and the attentions which that heart of gold lavished upon me. ис CHAPTER XIII. LOUIS CARNIGLIA. I MUST say a word about Louis. And why? because he was a simple sailor, may I not speak of him? Because he was not? Oh! I can avouch that his soul was so noble, for sustaining in all places, in all circumstances the honour of Italy; noble for facing tempests of all kinds; noble, above all, for protecting me, watching over me, and nursing me, as if I had been his child. When I lay, in my long struggle, upon my bed of pain; when, abandoned by all, I raved in the delirium of death, he was seated close to my pillow with the devotedness and patience of an angel, never leaving me for an instant but to go and weep where he could conceal his tears. O, Luigi! thy bones scattered in the abysses of the Atlantic, merited a monument upon which the grateful proscribed exile might one day present you as an example to his fellow-citizens, and repay you these pious tears you shed over him! Luigi Carniglia was from Deiva, a little country of the Levant. He had received no literary instruction, but he supplied this deficiency by a marvellous intelligence. Destitute of all the nautical science which forms the pilot, he conducted the vessels as far as Gualeguay, with the skill and good fortune of a consummate pilot. In the fight I have just described, it was due to him in particular that we escaped falling into the hands of the enemy. Armed with a tromblon, placed in the post of danger, he was the terror of the assailants. CHAPTER XIV. A PRISONER. I REMAINED nineteen days without any other assistance than that which was given me by Luigi Carniglia. At the end of the nineteenth day we arrived at Gualeguay. We had met, at the mouth of the Ibiqui, with a ship commanded by a Mahonais, named Don Lucas Tartaulo, a brave man, who showed me all sorts of kindnesses, giving me whatever he thought would be useful to me in my condition. All that he offered was accepted, for we literally wanted everything on board the goëlette except coffee; so that coffee was put into all I received, without inquiring whether coffee was to me a wholesome drink or an effective drug. I had begun by having a terrible fever, accompanied by a difficulty. of swallowing, almost amounting to an impossibility. This was not astonishing, the ball, in going from one side of the neck to the other, having passed between the cervical vertebræ and the pharynx; after a week or ten days, the fever abated, I began to swallow, and my situation became tolerable. Don Lucas had done still more; on quitting us he had-as had one of his passengers, named d'Arragaida, a Biscayan established in America-given me letters of recommendation for Gualeguay, particularly for the governor of the province of Entra-Rios, Don Pascal Echague, who, being about to make a voyage, left behind his own physician, Don Raymon Delarea, a young Argentine of great merit, who, having examined my wound, and having felt, on the opposite side to that at which it had entered, the ball roll beneath his finger, extracted it carefully by cutting the skin, and for several weeks, that is to say, till my perfect re-establishment, continued to give me the most affectionate attentions, and, let me not forget, the most disinterested. I sojourned six months at Gualeguay, and during E these six months I lodged in the house of Don Jacinto Andreas, who, as well as his family, paid me the politest civilities; but I was a prisoner, or nearly so. In spite of all the good-will of the governor, Don Pascal Echague, and the interest the brave people of Gualeguay evinced for me, I was obliged to await the decision of the dictator of Buenos Ayres, who decided nothing. The dictator of Buenos Ayres was, at that time, Rosas, of whom we shall have to speak hereafter on account of Montevideo. Cured of my wound, I began to go out a little; but by order of the authorities, my rides were very limited in extent. In exchange for my confiscated goëlette, I was paid a crown a-day, which was pretty well in a country where everything can be had for nothing, and where no opportunity can be found for expense; but all that did not compensate for the loss of liberty. But probably this expense of a crown a-day was burdensome to the government, for overtures for flight were made to me; but the people who made me these overtures in good faith, were, without knowing it, provoking agents. They told me that the governor would not view my escape with great concern. It did not require much persuasion to make me adopt a resolution which I had already formed in my own mind. governor of Gualeguay, since the departure of Don Pascal Echague, was a certain Leonardo Milan; he had, to that time, been of neither good nor harm to me; and till the day at which we are now arrived, I had had no further reason to complain of him than that he took very little interest in me. The I made up my mind, then, to fly, and with that view I commenced my preparations, in order to be ready at the first opportunity that might present itself. One stormy evening I consequently directed my course towards the house of an old, brave man whom I was accustomed to visit, and who lived about three miles from Gualeguay; this time I imparted my resolution to him, and begged him to find me a guide and horses |