hare of my usual
strength, and I believe the kindly little surgeon kept me under his
charge two or three days longer than was strictly necessary. Meantime
the mist still shrouded my memory, and though otherwise my wits were as
clear as they had ever been, so far as knowledge of anything other than
the commonest matters of daily life was concerned I was in a dense night
of ignorance.

Dr. Cuthbert took care to explain this to the officer of the watch in
which I was put, and the lieutenant was sufficiently humane to set me at
tasks which required no skill of seamanship. As it chanced, I saw
nothing of the midshipman who had impressed me. He was, as I afterwards
learned, in another watch.

The day I was ordered on deck we sighted a palm-fringed coast, which my
fellow seamen spoke of as Yucatan. The word meant nothing to me, for my
memory was still in the mist, and the only name left me out of the past
was Vera Cruz.

From Yucatan the _Belligerent_ cruised off in an easterly direction
toward Cuba. But the second day we fell in with a west-bound frigate,
which signalled the _Belligerent_ to patrol the mouths of the
Mississippi, on the lookout for a noted French privateer sloop _La Belle
Silene_, whose master, Jean Laffat or Lafayette, was rumored to have
turned pirate.

Had I been in full possession of my mental faculties, I must surely have
noted the similarity of names. Jean Lafitte was not so far from Jean
Laffat, and the _Siren_ from _La Belle Silene_. As it was, I doubt
whether at this time the shouting of Lafitte's name in my ear would have
stirred the faintest echo of memory.

The following morning, just at the change of the dog watch, the frigate
was suddenly roused from its dull, precise routine by the sound of a
heavy gun booming down the wind from the westward. Instantly the ship
was brought about, to tack to windward, and the order was given to clear
for action. The call to quarters was sounded, the marines paraded, and
the cannon run out ready for firing, all before we sighted the supposed
enemy.

Meantime the boom of the heavy cannon had come rolling down the wind to
us at such regular intervals that the men about me swore there could be
only one big gun. Before many minutes we distinguished the hoarse,
barking roar of many carronades. At the same time we sighted the square
topsails of a Spanish merchantman, and, a little later, the gaff-topsail
of a sloop.

Soon the word was shouted down from our loo