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.

"They contented themselves, then, with advancing their outposts to a
bend on the Calvi road not fifty yards from our lodging, which
happened to be the last house in the suburbs; and from his window,
during the two days we waited for Mr. Fett's sore to heal, Sir John
would watch the guard being relieved, and sometimes pick up his gun
and take long aim at the sentry, but lay it down with a sort of sigh:
for though the sight of a Genoese was poison to him, he reckoned
outpost-shooting as next door to shooting a fox.

"Our hosts, I should tell you, were an old soldier and his wife.
The man, by his own account, followed the trade of a bird-stuffer;
which was just an excuse for laziness, for no soul ever entered his
shop but to hear him talk of his campaigning under Gaffori and under
the great Pascal Paoli's father, Hyacinth Paoli. This he would do at
great length, and, for the rest, lived on his wife, who was a
well-educated woman and kept a school for small children when they
chose to come, which again was seldom.

"This Antonio, as we called him, owned a young ram, which was his pet