Tartar came, and he was Bowstrung, like his
predecessor. So Gholab Bashaw resigned the Three Horse-tails that during
so brief a period had waved at his Flagstaff, and became once more plain
JOHN DANGEROUS. The Sublime Porte, however, confiscated all my Property
at Broussa, including my Wives--I mean, my Women Servants.

With my Wife and Child I now returned to Europe, full of Years, and, I
hope, notwithstanding some Ups and Downs, full of Honours too. We were
in no hurry, however, to return to England; for I had wandered about
Foreign Parts so long in Discredit, and Danger, and Distress, that I
thought myself well entitled to see the world a little in Freedom and
Independence, and with a Handsome competence at my Back. Therefore, as
the Chevalier Captain John Dangerous,--I have dropped my Knightly rank
of late years,--and furnished with all necessary passports and
safe-conducts, we made our way across the Black Sea to Odessa, a mean
kind of place, but rising in the way of trade; and after a most affable
reception by the Russian Governor of that place, journeyed at our ease
through the Tauric Chersonese, now wrested from the Tartar Khans of
Simpheropol, and belonging to the Muscovites. Next, in a handsome
wheeled carriage-and-four, we made for the great City of Moscow,--the
old Capital of the Great Dukes of Russia,--where we abode two whole
years, and went among the very best people in the place; although I had
an ugly Equivoque with a young gentleman of Quality that was an officer
of Dragoons, and who, I declare, stole a diamond-mounted Snuff-box of
mine off my wife's Harpsichord, putting the same (the Snuff-box, I mean)
into the pocket of his pantaloons. Him I was compelled to expel from my
house, the Toe of my Boot aiding; and meeting him subsequently at a
Coffee-house, and he not seeming sufficiently impressed with the
turpitude of his Offence, but the rather inclined to regard it as a
venial Prank or Whimsey, I did Batoon him within an inch of his life,
and until there were more wheals on his Body than bars of silver-braid
on his Jacket. This led to a serious misunderstanding between Justice
and myself. I was not Imprisoned, but was summoned no less than
fifty-seven times before a kind of Judge they call an Assessor, who
addressed a number of interrogatories to me, which, at a moderate
computation, reached, in the course of five weeks, three thousand seven
hundred and nine questions. This might have gone on till Doo