e same moment a number of shots were fired, an officer
and two or three men fell. In a case like this, when blood has begun to
flow, there is no stopping it.

Murat knew this fatal truth, and his course of action was rapidly decided
on. Before him he had five hundred armed men, and behind him a precipice
thirty feet high: he sprang from the jagged rock on which he was
standing, and alighting on the sand, jumped up safe and sound. General
Franceschetti and his aide-de-camp Campana were able to accomplish the
jump in the same way, and all three went rapidly down to the sea through
the little wood which lay within a hundred yards of the shore, and which
hid them for a few moments from their enemies.

As they came out of the wood a fresh discharge greeted them, bullets
whistled round them, but no one was hit, and the three fugitives went on
down to the beach.

It was only then that the king perceived that the boat which had brought
them to land had gone off again. The three ships which composed the
fleet, far from remaining to guard his landing, were sailing away at full
speed into the open sea.

The Maltese, Barbara, was going off not only with Murat's fortune, but
with his hopes likewise, his salvation, his very life. They could not
believe in such treachery, and the king took it for some manoeuvre of
seamanship, and seeing a fishing-boat drawn up on the beach on some nets,
he called to his two companions, "Launch that boat!"

They all began to push it down to the sea with the energy of despair, the
strength of agony.

No one had dared to leap from the rock in pursuit of them; their enemies,
forced to make a detour, left them a few moments of liberty.

But soon shouts were heard: Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli, followed
by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred and fifty
paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were straining
themselves to make the boat glide down the sand.

These cries were immediately followed by a volley. Campana fell, with a
bullet through his heart.

The boat, however, was launched. Franceschetti sprang into it, Murat was
about to follow, but he had not observed that the spurs of his
riding-boots had caught in the meshes of the net. The boat, yielding to
the push he gave it, glided away, and the king fell head foremost, with
his feet on land and his face in the water. Before he had time to pick
himself up, the populace had fallen on him: in one insta