I had a letter of introduction to the commander of the French brig-of-war _Le Voltigeur_, then stationed in Cadiz Roads. On my presenting it, Monsieur Lebarbier de Linan politely invited me, and two other gentlemen, to dine on board his vessel, the next day about five o'clock. At four o'clock we were on the mole, looking out for a bark and a boatman to take us from the quay to the vessel, which it required fifteen or twenty minutes, at most, to reach. I was very much astonished at the boatman's demanding a douro instead of a piacetta which was the ordinary fare. In my ignorance of nautical matters, seeing the sky perfectly clear and the sun shining as on the first day of the creation, I very innocently imagined that the weather was fine. Such was my conviction. The weather was, on the contrary, atrocious, as I did not fail to perceive at the very first broadsides we encountered. There was a short, chopping sea, that was frightfully rough, while the wind was sufficient to blow our heads off our shoulders. We were tossed about as if we had been in a nutshell, and shipped water every instant. At the expiration of a few minutes we were enjoying a foot-bath, which threatened to become very speedily a hip-bath. The foam of the waves entered between my neck and the collar of my coat, and trickled down my back. The skipper and his two companions were swearing, vociferating and snatching the sheets and the helm out of each other's hands. One wanted this thing and the other that, and there was one moment when they were on the point of coming to fisticuffs. Our situation at last became so critical that one of them began to mumble the end of a prayer to some saint or other. Luckily we were now near the brig, that was calmly riding at anchor, and apparently looking down with an air of contemptuous pity on the convulsive evolutions of our little skiff. At length we came alongside, and it took us more than ten minutes ere we could succeed in catching hold of the man-ropes and scramble upon deck. "This is what I call being courageous and punctual," said the commander, with a smile, on seeing us climb up out the gangway, dripping with water, and with our hair streaming about us, like the beard of some marine deity. He then gave each of us a pair of trousers, a shirt, a waistcoat--in fact, a complete suit. "This will teach you," he continued afterwards, "to put faith in the descriptions of poets. You thought that every tempest must necessarily be accompanied with thunder, and waves mingling their foam with the clouds, and rain, and lightning darting through the murky darkness. Undeceive yourselves; in all probability, I shall not be able to send you on shore for two or three days."