Sir John had
sold Mr. Badcock's mule to our hosts in Calenzana, and here in Muro
he parted with our pair also, reck'nin' it safer to travel the next
stage on foot; since by all accounts we were about to skirt the
Genoese outposts to the east of Calvi. The Corsicans, to be sure,
held and patrolled the high road (by reason that every week-day a
train of waggons travelled along it with material for the new town
a-building on the seashore, at Isola Rossa), yet not so as to
guarantee it safe for a couple of chance riders. Also Sir John had
no mind to be stopped a dozen times and questioned by the Corsican
patrols. We kept, therefore, along the hills to the east of the
road; and on our way, having halted and slept a night in an olive
orchard about five miles from the coast, we woke up a little after
daylight to the sound of heavy guns firing.
"The meaning of this was made plain to us as we fetched our way round
to the eastward and came out upon the face of a steep hill that broke
away in steep cliffs to the very foreshore. There, below us, lay a
neat deep-water roadstead covered to westward by a small island with
a tower on it and a battery.
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