for three days, and then it as suddenly fell calm. I had
observed by the compass that we had been running to the eastward, and I
supposed that we were not very far from the Western Isles. As I surveyed
the bodies of my companions, it occurred to me that they ought to fetch
a high price in Italy as specimens of art, and I resolved to dispose of
them as the work of men. Having no other employment, I brought up the
spare planks from below, and made packing-cases for them all. It was
with some difficulty that I contrived, by means of tackles, to lower
them to the hold, which I succeeded in accomplishing with safety
excepting in one instance, when, from the tackle-fall giving way, the
image fell to the bottom of the vessel, and being very brittle, was
broken into pieces. As it was no longer of any value as a statue, I
broke it up to examine it, and I can assure your highness that it was
very wonderful to witness how every part of the human body was changed
into flint, of a colour corresponding with that which it had been when
living. The heart was red, and on my arrival in Italy I had several
seals made from it, which were pronounced by the lapidaries who cut them
to be of the finest blood-red cornelian. I have now a piece of the dark
stone of which the liver was composed, which I keep for striking a
light. As it afterwards proved, almost all of it was valuable, for the
alternate fat and lean formed a variety of beautiful onyxes and
sardonyx, which I disposed of very advantageously to the cameo
engravers. I was several days employed in packing up, but I had plenty
of provisions and water, and had no doubt but that I should be seen by
some vessel before they were expended. Three weeks had elapsed, when one
morning I went on deck, and saw land on both sides of me. I immediately
recognised the Rock of Gibraltar, and the Straits, through which I was
drifting. I was boarded by a Spanish gun-boat from Algesiras, and having
stated that all my crew had died two months before of the yellow fever,
I was towed in, put into quarantine for forty days, and then permitted
to equip my vessel and procure sailors. This I was enabled to do by
selling two of the flasks which held the water, and which, like all the
other utensils of the island from which I had escaped, were of pure
gold.

I did not think it prudent to go to Leghorn, where not only the vessel
might be recognised, and the widow give me some trouble, but the statues
also might have