There were no French troops in the town; but anchored close to the shore lay the French gun-boat _La Vigilante_, mounting a six and a fourteen pounder, and having thirty-six men—quite sufficient to hold in terror the inhabitants of the little town, who had not forgotten the visit paid them by Regnier’s rear-guard. My heart sickened when, from an eminence, I beheld _La Vigilante_, which was to bear me further from liberty and hope; and the most acute anguish took possession of me, when confined for the night and left to my own sad meditations. I understood that I was to be transmitted to the Upper Province with some other prisoners, who were to arrive from Monteleone in the morning, and be conveyed across the gulf of St. Eufemio by the gun-boat.
I found myself confined for the night in the upper apartment of a gloomy tower, formed of immense blocks of stone, squared and built by the hands of the Locrians. The chamber was vaulted, damp, and destitute of furniture; but a bundle of straw was thrown in for my couch by Corporal Crapaud: he, with the escort, occupied a chamber below, where they caroused and played with dominoes. A turf battery of four 24-pounders, facing the seaward, showed that the French had converted this remnant of the ancient Hipponium into a temporary fort: a trench and palisade surrounded it.
A single aperture a foot square, four feet from the floor, and crossed by an iron bar, admitted the night breeze and the rays of the moon; showing the dark mountains, the blue sky, and the sparkling stars.
Left to solitude, my own thoughts soon became insupportable. "At this time yesternight I was with Bianca!" To be separated from her for an uncertain time—perhaps for ever, if Regnier’s threats were fulfilled by the relentless Massena; to be taken from my important command at a time so critical—when the last stronghold of the British in Calabria was threatened by a desperate siege, on the issue of which the eyes of all Italy and Sicily were turned; the imminent danger and degrading suspicions under which I lay, manacled and imprisoned like a common felon; threatened on the one hand with captivity, on the other with death; and, worst of all, the image of Bianca, overwhelmed with sorrow and horror by the obscurity which enveloped my fate: all combined, tortured me to madness. I was in a state bordering on distraction. Stone walls, iron bars, and steel bayonets: alas! these are formidable barriers to liberty.