THE HUS SA R. CHAPTER I. MORE ADVENTURES IN SICILY. WHILE the naval forces of England and France thus came occasionally into collision, the soldiers on both sides gazed upon one another as two angry dogs are apt to do, whose chains will not permit them to meet. I cannot tell exactly what space there may be between Faro Point and the Calabrian coast; but that the one lies within long cannon-shot of the other we had the best means of determining; as well from the practice of the enemy's gunners as from that of our own. The French had on the slope of the opposite hill a lofty flag-staff with a long six-and-thirty pounder beside it, mounted on a traversing carriage. From this, which we were accustomed to call Long Tom, it was their "constant habit of an afternoon" to give us a salute, to which we invariably replied from a battery of four-and-twenty pounders planted not far above the high-water mark. That our shot were admirably thrown we could perceive, because more than once they cut down the French flag-staff, a hit which never failed to call forth from us the loudest cheering. Neither were the French gunners less skilful in their vocation. On both sides a great elevation was used, so that the balls fell in many instances almost perpendicularly, yet they never went very wide of their mark on either side, and the escapes among us were in consequence wellnigh miraculous. Take the following exam ples : I was myself reclining, one day, upon a sort of couch-a stretcher which I had placed in one corner of my room-with a cigar in my mouth and a cup a cannon-ball through the roof and struck the stone floor within a yard of me. Being a good deal spent it rolled towards the partition, through which, as it was made of deal, it burst, and then running over the foot of another man, who lay on a blanket in an adjoining apartment, it lamed him for life. Not yet exhausted, it passed through a second partition and tumbled into the kitchen, beneath the grate of which, to the astonishment of several persons who witnessed its evolutions, it made a final lodgement. There was of course a search made in the house for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of damage done, and though all pitied the poor wounded trooper, all at the same time admitted that matters might have been worse. of wine beside me, when down came On another occasion, an officer being about to shave in his tent, had suspended his lookingglass against the tent pole, and called repeatedly to his servant to fetch hot water. The man was |