“I consented; we shook hands; and the Sanspareil, after landing poor Captain Botten and his four men at the fort, put to sea. On board the Sanspareil I remained fourteen months. She took several valuable prizes and returned to Bordeaux, and as I gave my word not to attempt to escape, I went ashore with him. I did him, and my countrymen taken in the prizes, good service; I saved several from captivity; and, during the month we remained in Bordeaux, I was received into the captain’s family, and treated with the greatest kindness. I told him, after some months, finding him a true-hearted, kind man, who I really was, and how I was connected with one of the first families in France. We again put to sea. You may be sure, though I really wished no misfortune to occur to my worthy skipper, I still looked forward to a change of fortune. The Sanspareil was a splendid sailing vessel, and nearly two hundred and fifty tons burden, with a fine crew; but her career was drawing to a close. We left Bordeaux for a cruise in the Channel; we were but three days out when we encountered one of the most tremendous gales, the captain said, he had ever witnessed. Every sail we attempted to set was blown into ribbons, whilst a tremendous sea cleared our decks of boats and every inch of bulwark. Our rigging snapped like whipcord, and, finally, our main-mast went over the side, carrying with it three of the crew; so we drove up Channel under our fore-mast without a rag on it. The sea was awful to look at, and the weather so thick that we expected each moment, ignorant of where we were, to run ashore. At length, under a deluge of rain, the wind shifted to the nor’-west, and at break of day the sky suddenly cleared, and to the captain’s consternation we found ourselves within gun-shot of an English frigate, under storm staysails. English colours were shown on our fore-mast, but the Sanspareil was well known, and considered too great a pest to be spared; and the ship, as we shot close by, lifted on a huge billow, hailed through a speaking trumpet, ordering us to heave-to, or she would sink us. Captain Eltherme, even in that tremendous sea, sought to escape; and with great bravery—for heave-to he could not—lowered the English flag, and hoisted the tricolor. He imagined in that boiling sea the English frigate would never open fire, but she did; the iron shower passed over without injury to us; but another, as the frigate paid off, gave us our death wound, the shot going into our side as we rolled over on a cross sea. Some accident evidently happened to the frigate, for instead of following us she again bore up in the wind, whilst we contrived to set a stay-sail on the fore-mast, and then bore away for the French coast; but we soon found that the pumps would not keep the vessel free, neither could the carpenters plug the shot-hole in the breaking seas. Just as the sun was setting, and we were fast settling in the water, we came up with the French frigate Prudente lying to.