His voyage to Naples was tedious, and fraught with disaster. He says, “We had a fine view of Genoa and Leghorn, the weather being beautifully fine; the sky serene and cloudless, water perfectly smooth, and scarcely any wind. The prospect at midnight was inexpressibly sublime. The majesty of the moon slowly emerging from the deep, its diameter to appearance immensely increased; the peculiar brilliancy of the stars, together with awful flashes of lightning, and meteors shooting in every direction, exhibited a scene exquisitely grand.” The day following he has this remark, “The face of nature is changed, and the hand of God is now stretched out to punish my guilt.” His fears of an approaching storm must have been unfounded; for the next day he gives an animated description of the appearance of Genoa, and the people who crowded to the beach to see the ship as she passed slowly within a league of the shore. The calms and westerly currents, which for many months in the year prevail on that coast, prevented them from making any progress for some days longer, when a storm visited them in reality. His fearful conscience represents every adversity as the finger of Providence pointed against him. On the 9th day after leaving Toulon he says, “My evil destiny still pursues me. The enchanting beauty in which nature smiled so lately, is now changed to the alarming appearance of offended Heaven. Lowering clouds gathering from every point threaten an awful crisis to both fear and hope. “The wind increasing to a hurricane, drives the ship with impetuosity irresistible; and the dreadful heaving of the sea, as the watery mountains recede from their convulsed pursuers, leaves a tremendous chasm resembling the abrupt valleys interposed between highest alpine summits, which speedily meeting in all the agitation of confused conflict portend immediate destruction. “The mariners, dismayed, can no longer exert themselves for the safety of the crazy vessel; a wave has just broken over her and washed away two of them, who, but a moment before, were blaspheming the sacred name of their Maker. Alas! alas! who dares stand in his dread presence! “An awful crash, accompanied by faint cries ‘She is sinking’, has just reached my ear, and thundered on my soul. O God! how badly prepared!—A few minutes explained the disaster. A body of electric fluid struck the foremast, and shattered it into pieces, at the same moment depriving one of the sailors of life, and bruising two others most deplorably. The flash of lightning was so painfully vivid as to deprive most of us of vision for several seconds: but, to a man stationed on the bowsprit to look out ahead, it disclosed an object quite appalling—a rock towards which the ship was driving with fatal rapidity. A frantic shriek communicated the terrific fact.