At Cincinnati, the city of porkers, I took to the stage, at Pittsburg to the canal.  Across the Alleghanies I travelled in a coach crammed with passengers of both sexes.  It was a merry journey, during which I was ceaselessly haunted by memories of the little Danaids, and Pere Lournois and his forty sons-in-law, getting out of the Auxerre coach to the sound of the chimes of Dunkirk.  “Tutu ... tutu ... mon pere.”  At New York I found the Belle-Poule done up as good as new, thanks to the excellent care of my second in command, M. Charner.  But before setting sail I had to get through a certain number of banquets, followed by toasts, and even to go to Boston for a great ball in the old town hall, called the Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American Independence.  I made my entry at that ball preceded and surrounded by an army of solemn stewards, wearing huge wigs, and with rather a good-looking woman, whom nobody knew, on my arm.  She called herself America Vespuccia, and she began to swear like any heathen when somebody spilt a glass of lemonade over her fine velvet gown.

The Belle-Poule weighed anchor at last, but before we got past Sandy Hook a snowstorm came on.  We could not see a yard ahead, and in a few minutes we had a foot of snow on deck.  The rest of our return voyage was to match, in other words, it was awful.  We ran, during its course, one of those totally unforeseen risks of which a sailor’s life is full, and which, once past, constitutes one of its chief charms.  Let my readers try the following experiment:—­Put two small bits of paper in a basin of water, and disturb the liquid.  By what learned men call capillary attraction the two scraps of paper draw nearer to each other and finally join together.  It was this same capillary attraction which nearly lost me my frigate and another battleship, the Cassard, which was our consort.  A violent south-easterly squall had come down on us, and the sea was very heavy.  All at once, just as night fell, over a sky as black as ink and an angry-looking sea, the wind suddenly dropped.  The Cassard, driven by the last puff of wind, and drawn too by capillary attraction, had got very near us, and soon this nearness became alarming.  We could not get about, for there was not a breath stirring.  We could not launch boats in such a sea to try and tow the ships apart.  Soon the frigate and her consort were tossing convulsively in the heavy sea, with only the breadth of one wave between them.  In another moment they must crash into each other, and that at night, in mid-ocean, far from any succour.  It was a solemn moment.  Although one watch had been sent to turn in, nobody had cared to stay below.  All were on deck, men and officers alike, with serious faces.  The only sound to be heard was the noise of the sails flapping wildly against the masts and my voice as I gave the other ship’s captain his orders in case a puff of wind should come from this quarter or that.  Night had come on, and in our heart of hearts we were both of us beginning