After a lapse of many days, I resume my sketches, to give you some account of my going ashore in the West Indies, after my long and tedious voyage. Since I shut up the port-folio nothing worthy of remark has occurred. The same succession of two-knot breezes, of lazy floating gulf-weed and of flying fish; the same rolling of the vessel all the first part of our voyage, to make us sick, and then six days of severe squalls, during light and dark, to make us mad, were our only amusements. My comrade was on his back, a martyr to this combination of horrors. Mariette, poor thing! looks the spectre of herself; and as for myself, I have conjugated that bore of a verb _ennuyer_ in all its moods and tenses, until I began to fancy myself a marine Mazeppa, tied on a seahorse, and doomed to ride the waste of waters forever for my sins. What a relief was it, and how did it stir my sluggish blood, to hear the captain say that there was a pirate in full chase of us, one squally morning. We were a fore and aft schooner—with a two and a half knot wind—while the chase was square rigged, and neared us every moment. The wind had not blown from any quarter steadily for six days, but was rising and lulling every half hour,—and it was to this peculiarity in the weather that we owed our escape, after a smart chase of seven hours. Our craft was a very fast vessel on the wind, and a breeze springing up, we distanced the enemy in a little time, and soon run her clear out of sight. So much for the speed of the far famed Baltimore clippers! This sea-devil appears to be well known by sailors in these waters; and one of our crew told me that she carries no guns, but only small arms, which are easily stowed, or plausibly accounted for,—and if she is overhauled by a government vessel, that she shows merchants' papers. When she attacks she makes sure work, and quiets all babblers: “dead men tell no tales.” Upon our arrival at St. Thomas, we heard of preparations being made to pursue this very craft, which had been carrying on its bloody trade in the vicinity of that island. Arrived at St. Thomas on the last day of June.