the execution, only came from her concealment to enjoy the sight of
the old Prince's dead body dangling at the yardarm. "Come, Bronte,
come," said she, "let us take the barge and have another look at
Carraciolli"; and there they feasted their eyes on the lifeless
remains of their former associate, who had assuredly cursed them both
with his last dying breath. It is the custom when sailors are buried
at sea to weight their feet so that the body may sink in an upright
position. The same course was adopted with Carraciolli; shot was put
at his feet, but not sufficient, and he was cast into the sea. In a
few days the putrified body rose to the surface head upwards, as
though the murdered man had come again to haunt his executioners and
give them a further opportunity of gazing at the ghastly features of
their victim.[11] The sight of his old friend emerging again terrified
Ferdinand, and he became afflicted with a feeling of abiding horror
which he sought to appease by having the body interred in a Christian
burial-ground. But the spirit of his executed friend worried him all
his remaining days, and the act of burial did not save Naples from
becoming a shambles of conflict, robbery, and revolution. Neither did
Emma Hamilton escape her just deserts for the vile part she played in
one of the most abominable crimes ever committed. Her latter hours
were made terrible by the thought of the mockery of a trial, and the
constant vision of the Prince's ghost glowering at her from the
_Minerva's_ yardarm and from the surface of his watery tomb from which
he had risen again to reproach her with the inhuman pleasure she had
taken in watching the dreadful act. Nor did her shrieking avowal of
repentance give the wretched Jezebel of a woman the assurance of
forgiveness. She sought for distractions, and found most of them in
wickedness, and passed into the presence of the Great Mystery with all
her deeds of faithlessness, deceit, and uncontrollable revenge before
her eyes.