sh leaders of the
expedition, whose boastful and absurd histories ended by disgusting
every one. To listen to them, Ireland was not only unanimous in her
desire for separation, but England was perfectly powerless to prevent
it, and the only difficulty was, to determine the future fortune of the
liberated land, when once her freedom had been proclaimed. Among the
projects discussed at the time, I well remember one, which was often
gravely talked over, and the utter absurdity of which certainly struck
none among us. This was no less than the intention of demanding the West
India Islands from England, as an indemnity for the past woes and bygone
misgovernment of Ireland. If this seem barely credible now, I can only
repeat my faithful assurance of the fact, and I believe that some of the
memoirs of the time will confirm my assertion.

The French officers listened to these and similar speculations with
utter indifference; probably to many of them the geographical question
was a difficulty that stopped any further inquiry, while others felt no
further interest than what a campaign promised. All the enthusiastic
narratives, then, of high rewards and splendid trophies that awaited us,
fell upon inattentive ears, and at last the word Ireland ceased to be
heard among us. Play of various kinds occupied us when not engaged on
duty. There was little discipline maintained on board, and none of that
strictness which is the habitual rule of a ship-of-war. The lights were
suffered to burn during the greater part of the night in the cabins;
gambling went on usually till daybreak; and the quarter-deck, that most
reverential of spots to every sailor-mind, was often covered by lounging
groups, who smoked, chatted, or played at chess, in all the cool apathy
of men indifferent to its claim for respect.

Now and then, the appearance of a strange sail afar off, or some dim
object in the horizon, would create a momentary degree of excitement and
anxiety; but when the "look-out" from the mast-head had proclaimed her a
"schooner from Brest," or a "Spanish fruit-vessel," the sense of danger
passed away at once, and none ever reverted to the subject of a peril
then suggested.

With General Humbert I usually passed the greater part of each forenoon,
a distinction, I must confess, I owed to my skill as a chess-player, a
game of which he was particularly fond, and in which I had attained no
small proficiency. I was too young and too unpracticed in th