ican ship coming
out from Cagliari. A cannon-shot (we were armed with forty pieces of
small power) warned the captain to come to be recognized. He brought on
board a certain number of counterparts of passports, one of which agreed
perfectly with that which we carried. The captain being thus all right,
was not a little astonished when I ordered him, in the name of Captain
Braham, to furnish us with tea, coffee, and sugar. The American captain
protested; he called us brigands, pirates, robbers. Captain Braham
admitted without difficulty all these qualifications, and persisted none
the less in the exaction of sugar, coffee, and tea.

The American, then driven to the last stage of exasperation, addressed
himself to me, who acted as interpreter, and cried out, "Oh! rogue of a
renegade! if ever I meet you on holy ground I will break your head."
"Can you then suppose," I answered him, "that I am here for my pleasure,
and that, notwithstanding your menace, I would not rather go with you,
if I could?" These words calmed him; he brought the sugar, the coffee,
and the tea claimed by the Moorish chief, and we again set sail, though
without having exchanged the usual farewell.

We had already entered the Gulf of Lyons, and were approaching
Marseilles, when on the 16th August, 1808, we met with a Spanish corsair
from Palamos, armed at the prow with two twenty-four pounders. We made
full sail; we hoped to escape it: but a cannon-shot, a ball from which
went through our sails, taught us that she was a much better sailer than
we were.

We obeyed an injunction thus expressed, and awaited the great boat from
the corsair. The captain declared that he made us prisoners, although
Spain was at peace with Barbary, under the pretext that we were
violating the blockade which had been lately raised on all the coasts of
France: he added, that he intended to take us to Rosas, and that there
the authorities would decide on our fate.

I was in the cabin of the vessel; I had the curiosity to look furtively
at the crew of the boat, and there I perceived, with a dissatisfaction
which may easily be imagined, one of the sailors of the "Mistic,"
commanded by Don Manuel de Vacaro, of the name of Pablo Blanco, of
Palamos, who had often acted as my servant during my geodesic
operations. My false passport would become from this moment useless, if
Pablo should recognize me: I went to bed at once, covered my head with
the counterpane, and lay as still as a s