While these measures were being carried out the Neapolitan populace showed increasing excitement. On the 20th, "very large assemblies of people were in commotion, and several people were killed." The embarkation was fixed for the night of the 2ist of December, but there were hesitations, delays, a last clinging to the hope that Providence would interfere on behalf of the Sicilian royalties. General Acton had at last reached the point of thinking that " no time should be lost;" but he hastened to qualify that rash statement by adding, "If the wind does not blow too hard."
But even the delay of a night was more than Nelson would endure calmly. He was firm in his determination that as flight was the only remedy, it should be adopted without further dalliance. As the evening of the 2ist drew on, the Queen sat down in her dismantled palace to
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write a heart-broken letter to her daughter the Empress of Austria. Naples was in a tumult, the secret assassin walked the streets, the cloud of failure and disaster lay heavy on her spirit. Emma and Nelson were her only hope at this dark crisis, and they were both absent. On the very eve of the momentous flight, Sir William and Lady Hamilton, with Nelson, were attending a reception—which might well seem a strange form of amusement for people who had so much on their hands. But Emma gives the reason in her Prince Regent Memorial, written many years later:—
"To shew the caution and secrecy that was necessarily used in thus getting away, I had on the night of our embarkation to attend the party given by the Kilim Effendi, who was sent by the grand seignior to Naples to present Nelson with the Shahlerih or Plume of Triumph. I had to steal from the party, leaving our carriages and equipages waiting at his house, and in about fifteen minutes to be at my post, where it was my task to conduct the Royal Family through the subterranean passage to Nelsons boats, by that moment waiting for us on the shore."
In a letter written to Charles Greville after reaching Palermo, she carries the adventure a little further, giving more detail:—
"On the 2ist, at ten at night, Lord Nelson, Sir Wm., Mother and self went out to pay a visit,
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sent all our servants away, and ordered them in 2 hours to come with the coach, and ordered supper at home. When they were gone, we sett off, walked to our boat, and after two hours got to the Vanguard. Lord N. then went with armed boats to a secret passage adjoining to the pallace, got up the dark staircase that goes into the Queen's room, and with a dark lantern, cutlases, pistols, etc., brought off every soul, ten in number, to the Vanguard at twelve o'clock. If we had remained to the next day, we shou'd have all been imprisoned."
Could anything be more gloriously to Emma's taste than this Arabian Nights adventure ? First the reception, where she appeared to avert suspicion, feigning nonchalance and pleasure, then the swift walk to the waterside, where Nelson's boats waited in the dark, the secret passage, the "dark lantern, cutlases, pistols, etc." It is impossible to help thinking that the excitable Emma piled on her plurals a little here; Nelson, with his single hand, could hardly have managed more than one dark lantern, pistol, and cutlass, to say nothing of the "etc"! But that is typically Emma; she loved to paint with a broad brush and plenty of colour.
It will be noticed that her two accounts—the Prince Regent Memorial, and the letter to Greville —do not quite harmonize. In the one she says that she personally conducted the royal family
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through the subterranean passage to the boats, while in the other (written within a few weeks of the actual happening) the implication is that Nelson, armed to the teeth as in the pages of boys* fiction, undertook this business. Emma had not the temperament that is marked by meticulous accuracy, and this, like many another of her statements, shows a certain offhand carelessness. But in general she followed the broader lines of truth, and knowing her extravagant attachment to Maria Carolina and her passion for a prominent part in every adventure, even when accompanied by peril, it is not impossible to make the two statements fit by assuming that Nelson, as she says in the letter to Greville, undertook to see the royal party through the secret passage, but that she, instead of awaiting them at the boats, persuaded Nelson to let her accompany him, and share every one of the thrilling moments. There can be little doubt that her presence at this distressing time would be comforting to Maria Carolina.
That Nelson himself anticipated some danger in the embarkation is shown by his secret orders to the squadron: the boats of the Vanguard and the Alcmena were to be armed with cutlasses, the launches with carronades, and the boats were to carry from four to half a dozen soldiers each, while in case assistance was wanted by Nelson on shore, <c false fires will be burnt."
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But these precautions, so wise under the circumstances, were, after all, not needed. The royal family and all their belongings were safely and without alarm rowed to the British flagship. But though they were all stowed on
