at ten o'clock. Better
acquaintance with Mediterannean _pyroscaphs_, as they call themselves,
whose axle-trees turn not except when the police pleases, ought to have
led us to all the latitude of uncertainty; but when two hours and more
had elapsed with all the passengers aboard, we began to suppose some
extraordinary cause for so long a detention. A deputation is accordingly
dispatched to the captain, which brings back an abrupt reply, that he is
not going _yet_; and that it is for him and the proprietors to be
dissatisfied, who are wasting steam, while we are only losing patience.
It shortly transpired that he was under Government orders, and would not
proceed for another hour at _least_, nor even then, unless he received
permission from the minister of police. The affair now looked serious.
We must have some _carbonaro_ on board, who was, in due time, to be
arrested; and no further doubt could remain of this, when, that other
hour being past, we saw a longboat leaving shore, with two officers and
six stout rowers, who soon brought her under our bow. What can it be?
The senior epaulet rises in the boat--the second follows his
example--both are on deck; the captain, hitherto unseen, now comes
forward with alacrity, and, stretching forward _both_ his hands,
receives with profound reverence a thin, square enclosure, with an
immense seal attached to it, and retires to put it in a place of safety.
The uniforms disappear over the side of the vessel--the paddles begin to
paw the water--we swing round--and in a few seconds our prow points for
the _Sorrentine_ coast, and we are on our watery way to _Sicily_. What,
then, had detained us? It is always very provoking to have a miserable
solution of a promising mystery! We were on the exact spot for a new
edition of some "_Verbosa et grandis Epistola_" from the tyrants of the
land; and so it was, but only not _from_ Capreae or Tiberius this time.
Yes! The actual cause of the delay of a great steam-boat, full of
passengers, for three hours, attended, among other melancholy results,
with that of exciting the choler of a new-made cardinal, was a _letter_
that the Queen of Naples, who had probably overslept herself, had
occasion to write to the king on conjugal affairs!--his majesty having
left her majesty only the day before, to show himself to his loving
subjects at Palermo. Hem! Campania _felix_! If we were known to be
inditing this unreverential passage, and its disloyal apostrophe,