e of my coming, &c., all
of which I took with a considerably large grain of salt, and left him
lamenting my mad folly, as he called it.

Now I must be candid. I did not _feel_ the danger. I calculated that to
put down torpedoes in a current such as was in the Danube would be a
matter of time, and probably they would not succeed after all. I had a
plan in my head for passing the batteries, so as to render them
harmless. So in reality I was about to attempt no very impossible feat.
Three hours after dusk we sighted the lights of Ibraila. The current was
running quite five knots an hour; that, added to our speed of fifteen,
made us to be going over the ground at about twenty knots. It was pitch
dark, and I think it would have puzzled the cleverest gunner to have hit
us, though they might have done so by chance. I determined not to give
them that chance, by going so close under the bank that the guns could
hardly be sufficiently depressed to hit us.

As we approached the batteries to my horror a flash of red flame came
out of the funnel (that fatal danger in blockade-running), on which
several rockets were thrown up from the shore, and a fire was opened at
where the flame had been seen. Meanwhile we had shot far away from the
place, and closed right under the batteries. I heard the people talking;
every now and then they fired shot and musketry, but I hardly heard the
_whiz_ of the projectiles. My principal anxiety was that we might get on
one of the many banks so common in the Danube, and I had perhaps a
_little_ fear of torpedoes, especially when we passed the mouths of the
little estuaries that run into the Danube; once we just touched the
ground, but thank goodness we quickly got free, and though fired at by
guns and rifles, went on unhurt. It took us exactly an hour and forty
minutes to pass dangerous waters, and the early summer morning was
breaking as we cleared all danger. I could not resist turning round and
firing a random shot at the banks studded with Russian tents, _now that
I was able to breathe freely again_.

I must say that my pilot, whom I at first suspected of being a traitor
in Russian pay, behaved splendidly.

He told me he had never passed such a night of fear and anxiety: what
with my cocked pistol at his head and the constant fear of putting the
vessel on a bank, he certainly had had a bad time. However, I rewarded
him well. On arrival at Toultcha, a small town near the mouth of the
Danube, still