“You had the coolness to apply for that passport?”

“And the good fortune to obtain it.  If anything, my dear fellow, deserves the degree of astonishment your face expresses, it should rather be my consenting to use disguise, and so breaking through a self-denying ordinance on which you have sometimes rallied me.  Suspense—­the danger from Bayonne hourly anticipated—­had perhaps shaken my nerves.  To be brief, I travelled to Nantes as Mr. Jonathan Buck, and in that name took passage in a vessel bound for Philadelphia and on the point (as I understood) of lifting anchor.

“I slept that night on board the Minnie Dwight—­this was the vessel’s name—­in full hope that my troubles were at an end.  But next morning her captain came to me with a long face and a report that some hitch had occurred between him and the port authorities over his clearing-papers.  ‘And how long will this detain us?’ I asked, cutting short an explanation too technical for my understanding.  He answered that he had been to his Consul to protest, but could promise nothing short of a week’s delay.

“Well, I saw nothing for it but to shut the cabin-door, make a clean breast of my fears, and desire him to help me in devising some new plan.  He was a good fellow, and ingenious too; for after he had dashed up my hopes with the news that a similar embargo lay on all foreign ships in the port, his face cleared, and, said he, ’There’s no help for it, but you must play the sea-lawyer and I the brutal tyrant.  It’s hard, too, upon a man who treats his crew like his own children, and victuals his ship like an eating-house:  but a seaman’s rig and forty dollars is all you need, and with this you’ll fare off to the American Consul’s and swear that I’ve made life a burden to you.’  ‘Why forty dollars?’ I asked.  He winked.  ’That’s earnest money that when you reach the United States you’ll have the law of me for ill-usage.’  ’And what shall I get in exchange?’ ’You will get a certificate enabling you to pass from port as a discharged sailor seeking a ship.’  I thanked him warmly, and agreed; climbed down the ship’s side in my new rig, waved an affecting farewell to my benevolent tyrant, and sought the American Consul who (it seemed) was used to discontented seamen.  At all events, he accepted without suspicion his share in the dishonouring comedy, took my forty dollars, and made out my certificate.”

Here the Captain glanced at Doctor Gonsalvez, who blinked.

Said I:  “Even a Protestant must sometimes understand the relief of confession.”

“Armed with this,” he went on, “I made my way to the mouth of the Loire, to St. Nazaire, between which and Le Croisic lies a small island where, in the present weakness of the French marine, English ships of war are suffered to water unmolested.  For ten napoleons I bribed an old fisherman to row me out at night to this island, which we reached at daybreak, and to our dismay found the anchorage empty.