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The Bourbon cruisers had left the harbor of Marsala that morning, sailing eastward, while we were arriving from the west; indeed, they were still in sight toward Cape San Marco as we entered, so that by the time they came within cannon-shot we had already landed all the men out of the Piemonte and were beginning to debark those on board the Lombardo.
With these data, the ratio of the height to the circumference would be only a seventy-second; but I find on tracing a curve through Catania, Palermo, Bronte, and Piemonte, only 62 miles in circumference, according to the best maps. This increases the ratio to a fifty-fourth.
Then and then only did they direct their guns on the Piemonte and Lombardo, and fire a few shots into the city, which caused no other damage than the destruction of two casks of wine. On the 12th, Garibaldi left Marsala for Salemi, a mountain city approached by a steep, winding ascent, where he was sure of a warm reception, as it had already taken arms against the Bourbon king.
He resolved, therefore, not to stop him under any circumstances, but the case did not occur, for the fairest of May weather favoured the voyage, and six days after the start the men were quietly landed at Marsala without let or hindrance from the two Neapolitan warships which arrived almost at the same time as the Piemonte and Lombardo, an inconceivable stroke of good fortune which, like the eventful march that was to follow, seems to belong far more to romance than to history.
The Thousand embarked at Quarto, near Genoa, during the night of the 5th of May on the two merchant vessels, the Piemonte and Lombardo, which, with the complicity of their patriotic owner, R. Rubattino, had been sequestered for the use of the expedition.
Notwithstanding this, three-fourths of the volunteers were still on the quay when the Bourbons began firing on them with shells and grape-shot happily, without injury to anyone. The Piemonte, abandoned by us, was carried off by the enemy, who left the Lombardo, which had grounded on a sand-bank.
D'Aspre's daring was rewarded by his carrying La Biccocca at about mid-day, but the Duke of Genoa retook the position with the aid of the valorous 'Piemonte' brigade, and by two p.m.
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