It involved killing one of his guards, stunning another, and seizing the chief's own camel, and it was not without great risk to his life that he got away.

A fortnight later he had travelled five hundred miles and reported himself at headquarters in Massowah, dressed in a long native shirt, a dirty turban, and nothing else, as Captain Giovanni Severi, formerly of the Staff and late of the expedition that had perished five years earlier.
It chanced, for the inevitable was at work, that the mail steamer for Italy was to leave the next morning and a small man-of-war on the following day, also homeward bound.

Giovanni wrote to Angela Chiaromonte by the former and went on board the Government vessel twenty-four hours afterwards.

He himself sent no telegram, because he did not know where his brothers were and he feared lest a telegraphic message might give Angela a bad shock, if it reached her at all.
Moreover, he had no news of her and could get no information whatever, so that he addressed his letter to Madame Bernard's old lodgings on the mere possibility that it might reach its destination.
Any one might have supposed that the news of his escape would have been in the papers before he reached Italy, for it was telegraphed to the War Office in Rome by the officer in command of the force at Massowah.

But the Minister chose to keep the intelligence a secret till Giovanni's arrival, because he expected to gain much information from him and feared lest the newspapers should get hold of him and learn facts from him which would be more useful to Italy if not made public; and when the Italian Government wishes to keep a secret, it can do so quite as well as any other, to the despair of the public press.
The consequence of the Minister's instructions was that Giovanni was met by a superior officer who came on board the man-of-war at Naples in order to forestall any possible attempt on the part of correspondents to get hold of him, and also for the purpose of giving him further directions for his conduct.