the Italian who had, what he called, the glory of presenting it, saying,
he had killed the man as he was running away, and begging his excellency
to accept the head, and consider it as a proof of the writer's
attachment to the crown. With the first successes of the court the work
of punishment began. The judge at Ischia said it was necessary to have
a bishop to degrade the traitorous priests before he could execute them;
upon which Troubridge advised him to hang them first, and send them to
him afterwards, if he did not think that degradation sufficient. This
was said with the straightforward feeling of a sailor, who cared as
little for canon-law as he knew about it; but when he discovered that
the judge's orders were to go through the business in a summary manner,
under his sanction, he told him at once that could not be, for the
prisoners were not British subjects; and he declined having anything to
do with it. There were manifestly persons about the court, who, while
they thirsted for the pleasure of vengeance, were devising how to throw
the odium of it upon the English. They wanted to employ an English
man-of-war to carry the priests to Palermo for degradation, and then
bring them back for execution; and they applied to Troubridge for
a hangman, which he indignantly refused. He, meantime, was almost
heartbroken by the situation in which he found himself. He had promised
relief to the islanders, relying upon the queen's promise to him. He had
distributed the whole of his private stock,--there was plenty of grain
at Palermo, and in its neighbourhood, and yet none was sent him: the
enemy, he complained, had more interest there than the king; and the
distress for bread which he witnessed was such, he said, that it would
move even a Frenchman to pity.

Nelson's heart, too, was at this time a-shore. "To tell you," he says,
writing to Lady Hamilton, "how dreary and uncomfortable the VANGUARD
appears, is only telling you what it is to go from the pleasantest