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it for the last time."
"Look beyond this scene, into the long vista of eternity, son; there
thou wilt behold that which mocks at all human, all earthly means. I
fear that our time is but short--hast thou aught yet to say in
the flesh?"
"Let it be known, holy priest, that in my dying moment I prayed for
Nelson, and for all who have been active in bringing me to this end. It
is easy for the fortunate and the untempted to condemn; but he is wiser,
as he is safer, who puts more reliance on the goodness of God than on
his own merits."
A ray of satisfaction gleamed athwart the pale countenance of the
priest--a sincerely pious man, or fear of personal consequences might
have kept him aloof from such a scene--and he closed his eyes while he
expressed his gratitude to God in the secret recesses of his own spirit.
Then he turned to the prince and spoke cheeringly.
"Son," he said, "if thou quittest life with a due dependence on the Son
of God, and in this temper toward thy fellow-creatures, of all this
living throng thou art he who is most to be envied! Address thy soul in
prayer once more to Him who thou feelest can alone serve thee."
Caraccioli, aided by the priest, knelt on the scaffold; for the rope
hung loose enough to permit that act of humiliation, and the other bent
at his side.
"I wish to God Nelson had nothing to do with this!" muttered Cuffe, as
he turned away his face, inadvertently bending his eyes on the
Foudroyant, nearly under the stern of which ship his gig lay. There, in
the stern-walk, stood the lady, already mentioned in this chapter, a
keen spectator of the awful scene. No one but a maid was near her,
however; the men of her companionship not being of moods stern enough
to be at her side. Cuffe turned away from this sight in still stronger
disgust; and just at that moment a common cry arose from the boats.
Looking round, he was just in time to see the unfortunate Caraccioli
dragged from his knees by the neck, until he rose, by a steady
man-of-war pull, to the end of the yard; leaving his companion alone on
the scaffold, lost in prayer. There was a horrible minute of the
struggles between life and death, when the body, so late the tenement of
an immortal spirit, hung, like one of the jewel-blocks of the ship,
dangling passively at the end of the spar, as insensible as the wood
which sustained it.
CHAPTER XV.
"Sleep, sleep, thou sad one, on the sea;
The wash of waters lulls thee now;
His arm no more will pillow thee,
Thy hand upon his brow;
He is not near, to hurt thee, or to save:
The ground is his--the sea must be thy grave."
DANA.
Page 141
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A long summer's evening did the body of Francesco Caraccioli hang
suspended at the yard-arm of the Minerva; a revolting spectacle to his
countrymen and to most of the strangers who had been the witnesses of
his end. Then was it lowered into a boat, its feet loaded with a
double-headed shot, and it was carried out a league or more into the bay
and cast into the sea. The revolting manner in which it rose to the
surface and confronted its destroyers a fortnight later has passed into
history; and, to this day, forms one of the marvels related by the
ignorant and wonder-loving of that region[6]. As for Ghita, she
disappeared no one knew how; Vito Viti and his companions being too
much absorbed with the scene to note the tender and considerate manner
in which Raoul rowed her off from a spectacle that could but be replete
with horrors to one so situated. Cuffe himself stood but a few minutes
longer; but he directed his boat's crew to pull alongside of the
Proserpine. In half an hour after the execution took place this frigate
was aweigh; and then she was seen standing out of the bay, before a
light air, covered with canvas from her truck to her hammock-cloths.
Leaving her for the moment, we will return to the party in the skiff.
[6] Singular as was this occurrence, and painful as it must have proved
to the parties to the execution, it is one of the simplest consequences
of natural causes. All animal matter swells in water previously to
turning corrupt. A body that has became of twice its natural size, in
this manner, as a matter of course, displaces twice the usual quantity
of water; the _weight_ of the mass remaining the same. Most human frames
floating, in their natural state, so long as the lungs are inflated with
air, it follows that one in this condition would bring up with it as
much weight in iron, as made the difference between its own gravity and
that of the water it displaced. The upright attitude of Caraccioli was
owing to the shot attached to the feet; of which, it _is_ also probable,
one or two had become loosened.
Neither Carlo Giuntotardi nor Ghita Caraccioli--for so we must continue
to call the girl, albeit the name is much too illustrious to be borne by
one of her humble condition in life--but neither of these two had any
other design, in thus seeking out the unfortunate admiral, than to
perform what each believed to be a duty. As soon as the fate of
Caraccioli was decided, both were willing to return to their old
position in life; not that they felt ashamed to avow their connection
with the dead, but because they were quite devoid of any of that worldly
ambition which renders rank and fortune necessary to happiness.
When he left the crowd of boats, Raoul pulled toward the rocks which
bound the shores of the bay, near the gardens of Portici. This was a
point sufficiently removed from the common anchorage to be safe from
observation; and yet so near as to be reached in considerably less than
an hour. As the light boat proceeded Ghita gradually regained her
composure. She dried her eyes and looked around her inquiringly, as if
wondering whither their companion was taking them.
"I will not ask you, Raoul, why you are here at a moment like this, and
whence you have come," she said; "but I may ask whither you are now
carrying us? Our home is at St. Agata, on the heights above Sorrento,
and on the other side of the bay. We come there annually to pass a month
with my mother's sister, who asks this much of our love." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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