Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,
occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of his
misfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,
wandering from port to port on the chance of embarking on a man-of-war.
Once he was found in a forest near dead with grief and cold, and rescued
by a rich farmer; shortly afterwards, in a grove in Brittany, he chanced
upon one of the gallants who had robbed him, and the two out swords and
fell to cutting. Smith had the satisfaction of wounding the rascal, and
the inhabitants of a ruined tower near by, who witnessed the combat,
were quite satisfied with the event.
Our hero then sought out the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought up in
England during the French wars, by whom he was refurnished better than
ever. After this streak of luck, he roamed about France, viewing the
castles and strongholds, and at length embarked at Marseilles on a ship
for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vessel anchored under the lee of
the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, in Savoy.
The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound for Rome,
regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, swore that his
nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, and declared
that they never should have fair weather so long as he was on board. To
end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But God got him ashore on
the little island, whose only inhabitants were goats and a few kine. The
next day a couple of trading vessels anchored near, and he was taken
off and so kindly used that he decided to cast in his fortune with them.
Smith's discourse of his adventures so entertained the master of one
of the vessels, who is described as “this noble Britaine, his neighbor,
Captaine la Roche, of Saint Malo,” that the much-tossed wanderer was
accepted as a friend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria,
where they discharged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting
for some time among the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more
freight, they at length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for
some days betwixt the isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it
presently appeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la
Roche, was looking for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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