of using it. This object was attended with many obstacles. The shell of the outer wall could not be burst open without some noise. By day there would be no chance of getting out unseen; and by night the sound of their operations would be distinctly heard. After long deliberations, the scheme was decided upon, which was executed as we have seen. Though actually in great distress, they determined to heighten the appearance of it, and so by degrees bring things to such an extremity that it might appear their pitiable condition drove them to their ultimate act of desperation. For this reason they made such repeated demonstrations of their misery, and finally put the consummation of their rebellious acts upon the pretext of extreme thirst. At the appointed hour they placed themselves at the farther end of their subterranean passage; and having laid a communicating train of gunpowder to the heart of the magazine, they awaited only the first bell of St. John’s Church as the signal for the hazardous experiment. At a moment quitting the train, and themselves bursting through the stone partition which bound their excavation, they were instantly beyond the reach of death, and of suspicion into the bargain. They relied on the effect of their own display of wretchedness to confirm the opinion that this act was the result of despair; and they knew that the blackened tunnel through which they had crawled, would be attributed to the fury of the explosion, and considered as a channel forcibly, hut spontaneously burst, by the volcano they had erected. – They were hitherto right in their surmises: but beyond this fortune deserted them. They wandered by stealth over the deserted parts of the sea-coast, in vain attempting to procure a boat, in which they might pass over to Sicily. Discovered once in a scheme to purloin a speronara[1] privily, they were in imminent danger of being then delivered up to justice, and were compelled to wait almost hopelessly for a more favourable time. The necessity of lying quite concealed prevented their procuring any but the vilest and least nutritive food. A few vegetables were all they had subsisted upon, but leaves and grass, since the hour of their escape. They bore up, however, manfully, and despite the extreme indigence to which they were reduced, no one committed himself by any unseasonable exposure until the day when one of the least provident, goaded by insufferable pangs of hunger, made the unlucky attempt upon the Maltese priest, which led to their detection.
“They were marched into the city, guarded by two lines of troops, and the forlorn aspect they presented will be remembered by many a spectator till his dying day. Even then they were not dejected. Their eyes were all brightness in the midst of their desolation, like a fire in the darkness of night; and the pitiful natives crouched beneath those glances which- ↑ Speronara, a little picturesque boat, commonly seen on the channel between Malta and Goza.
