About the 6th of June, the weather being then very hot, with light breezes, we crossed the line, as it is called, not of course the true equator or equinox, but the tropic of Cancer. This was, according to the custom of the sea, a great festival on board, those who had not passed that way before being obliged to submit to the ceremony of baptism, as they call it, which was performed after the manner then in use amongst French ships, as follows:— The master’s mate dressed himself in a strange sort of garment, fashioned so as to be ridiculous and burlesque, and reaching to his heels, with a hat or cap made to match. In his right hand he held a great clumsy wooden sword; in his left a pot of ink. His face he had besmirched with soot, and he wore an uncouth necklace made of strings of blocks or pulleys, such as are used in the rigging for ropes to pass through. Thus accoutred, all the novices knelt down before him, while he favoured the shoulders of each with a smart slap of the sword, smearing also a great cross upon his brows, or sometimes over all his face with the ink. Immediately after, the novice was drenched with dozens of buckets of water, and the ceremony ended by his depositing his offering, as they call it, of a bottle of brandy, which must be placed in perfect silence at the foot of the mainmast. For myself, I underwent the mummery with the rest, and had, fortunately, sufficient in my pocket to contribute my bottle of brandy. One of the Hollanders on board told me that their mode of baptism was different; they either insisting upon a ransom, according to the station of the novice, or hoisting him to the main yard and from thence dropping him into the sea three several times. ‘If, however,’ said my informant, a simple man, ‘he be hoisted a fourth time in the name of the Prince of Orange, or of the master of the vessel, his honour is reckoned more than ordinary.’ In case of the ship—I speak still of the Hollanders—never having passed that place before, the captain is bound to give the mariners a small runlet of wine, which if he neglect to do, they maintain that they may cut the stem off the vessel. But in French and in Dutch ships, the profits accruing from the ceremony are kept by the master’s mate, and spent upon the arrival in port, in a general debauch by all the seamen. CHAPTER II. OF MY ESCAPE FROM THE FRENCH SHIP, AND MY LANDING IN HISPANIOLA.