The great deserter could easily persuade himself that this was an act of heroism--risking his life on hostile waters in order to save France. It was not hard to reason speciously that it was a colony which had been intended, and a colony which had been planted; that in his return he was using the discretion granted by the Directory, and carrying out a plan announced from the outset. But it needed no verdict of posterity to declare that it would have been more heroic to remain and share the consequences of a scheme so largely his own. His conscience asserted as much, for he deceived the brilliant and acute Kléber in an appointment to say farewell, which was not kept; while the Grand Council of Cairo was told that he had gone to take command of his fleet, and would return in three months. Orders were left that if fifteen hundred soldiers should die of the pest, Kléber should open negotiations for evacuating the country. An angry and emphatic protest was written by the victimized general; but it was intercepted by the English cruisers, and did not fall into the hands of his betrayer until after he had become First Consul. At St. Helena, Napoleon declared that the failure of the expedition was clear to him from the moment of Nelson's victory; for any force which cannot be recruited must melt away and eventually surrender. Sir Sidney Smith, not thinking either that a general would abandon his army, or that vessels would sail for Europe against the adverse winds of that season, had made for Cyprus to renew his supply of water. In this interval the two French frigates gained the open sea, their captains entertaining the vague hope of reaching Toulon direct, by some reversal of nature's laws. But the prevalent breezes continued, and compelled them to coast along the African shore. It was three weeks before they even sighted the headlands of Tunis. At last a favoring wind began to blow. With lights extinguished, they passed at night the strait which separates Africa from Sicily, escaping the observation of the English cruisers sent from Nelson's fleet to patrol those waters. Skirting Sardinia, the flotilla reached Corsica early in October. Though, as Bonaparte declared, he was "deeply moved by the sight of his native town," no remnant of his early enthusiasm could sweeten for him the enforced delay of several days in the harbor of Ajaccio. He had left far behind the emotions of that primitive society, and, evidently fretting to be gone, was rather impatient at the abounding caresses of all the friends who thronged the town when he was ashore and crowded the decks when he was afloat. Some deeds have been recorded to his credit: all the money he had by him, about forty thousand francs, he distributed to the garrison, which had not been paid for over a year and a half; his features, it is also said, relaxed with evident joy as he tenderly returned the greeting of the old woman who had been his earliest attendant. It was his last visit