“’Next I taught them that the doctrine was damnable; and that it robbed Corsica of men who should be fighting the Genoese, on which errand we were bound.

“’And lastly I proved to them out of the mouths of several wise men (some of Greece, and others of my own inventing) that a man with three glasses of their wine in his belly was a man possessed, and therefore that either nothing had happened, or, if anything had happened, the fellow to blame must be that devil of a warrior the Invincible St. Cyprien.

“’Yet (as so often happens) the argument that really persuaded them, as I believe, was one I never used at all; which was, that the woman had money and a parcel of land, and albeit no man could pick up courage to marry her, they did not relish a stranger stepping in and cutting them out.’

“Be that as it may, gentlemen, in twenty minutes the crowd had come round to Sir John’s way of thinking; and they not only sold us mules at thirty livres apiece—­which Sir John knew to be the fair current price—­but helped us to truss up Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock, each on his beast, and walked with us back to the cross-roads, singing hymns about Corsican liberty.  Only we left the woman sadly cast down.

“From the cross-roads, where they left us and turned back, our road led through a great forest of pines.  Among these pines hung thousands of what seemed to be balls of white cotton, but were the nests of a curious caterpillar; which I only mention because Mr. Fett, coming to, picked up one of these caterpillars and slipped it down the nape of Mr. Badcock’s neck, whereby the poor man was made uncomfortable all that day and the next; for the hairs of the insect turned out to be full of poison.  In the end we were forced to strip him and use the gridiron upon him for a currycomb; so it came in handy, after all.

“On the second day, having crossed a river and come to a village which, if I remember, was called Manso, we bore away southward among the most horrible mountains.  Among these we wandered four days, relying always on Sir John’s map:  but I reckon the man who made it must have drawn the track out of his own head and trusted that no person would ever be fool enough to go there.  Hows’ever, the weather keeping mild, we won through the passes with no more damage than the loss of Mr. Fett’s mule (which tumbled over a precipice on the third day), and a sore on Mr. Fett’s heel, brought about by his having to walk the rest of the way into Calenzana.

“Now at Calenzana, a neat town, we found ourselves nearly in sight of Calvi and plumb in sight of the Genoese outposts that were planted a bare gunshot from the house where we lodged, on the road leading northward to Calvi gate.  To the south, as we heard—­though we never saw them—­lay a regiment of Paoli’s militia; and, between the two forces Calenzana stood as a sort of no-man’s-land, albeit the Genoese claimed what they called a ‘supervision’ over it.  In fact they never entered it, mistrusting its defences, and also the temper of its inhabitants, who were likely enough to rise at their backs if the patriots gave an assault.