We had no longer any thing to live upon but hard rye biscuits and bad water, with brandy and raw sugar, very little salt fish and salt meat; and that little but for a few days more. This diet, together with the vexation I experienced, was nearly fatal to me, as the pain in my chest became intolerably severe. I renewed my entreaties to the captain to stand in for the land; where we might hope to make some part of the Spanish coast. The more I entreated the more perverse he grew. He had before refused to put us on shore in Portugal, lest we should all be imprisoned for life. He now refused to approach the Spanish coast; for, he said, that if the wind should be on shore, he would be blown upon the rocks: if it was off the shore, he could not make the land: if there was little or no wind, the current would run away with him. But he went sometimes so far as to offer me the command of the ship, provided I would secure him the payment of it. I told him I was not rich enough to buy his dogger, but that if he would stand in near the shore, and let me have one of his boats, I would pay him for it the price he should ask, and my servant and I should go on shore; by which means the provisions would last so much longer for the rest. This also he refused; and when every other reason was exhausted, he persisted that he could not go into Spain without performing quarantine. It was in vain we assured him that the Spaniards exacted no such thing on the coasts of the ocean. It had happened to him once in a Spanish port in the Mediterranean, and he conceived, or pretended to think, that we were misleading him.

Such evils were not of a nature to decrease with time, and our captain became every day more disturbed. Before, he had been sober and abstemious; but latterly resorted frequently for consolation to the brandy bottle. He often started in his bed, and talked through his sleep; and at the same time became most fervently devout. Twice a day he took his little ship's company down into the forecastle or steerage, to sing

hymns for a fair wind. But it was all to no purpose. Once only we had a propitious moment. The wind blew fair; the yards were squared, and the steering sails were set. The steersman, who had hitherto been of an unalterable gravity, went down for his mandoline, and the captain danced to his music. I shall give no other praise to these performers than to say, that none ever gave me greater pleasure. Every body was happy, bustling, and gay. The breeze seemed sent from heaven for our relief, and there appeared a kind of exulting consciousness that the hymns had not been sung in vain. There was no longer any need that a man should die to appease an angry Providence. I too put in my claim to merit; for though I had not joined in the hymns, I had generally steered the vessel, that all the hands might. The remaining fowl was now ordered to be killed, and the rigour of our allowance was relaxed, and a smile of hope and cheerfulness sat upon every countenance. But how great is the uncertainty of sublunary events. In less than an hour all grew black again. The wind blew again as formerly. By little and little the sails were unwillingly trimmed. The steering sails were again lowered in sullen silence. The mandoline disappeared, and I need not say, the dancing ceased also. There was no more smile, no more joke nor play. In short, for the length of that day, no man ventured to look another into the face, much less to speak to him.

It was while things were growing towards the worst, that we were boarded by a French privateer brig, called the Venus, from Nantes. The captain, on board of whom we were carried, finding us in rule, and having some knowledge of Mr. Rivet, who was from the same town, apologized very civilly for the trouble and delay he had given us, and made us a present of some articles of provision. And after he had left us, and was almost out of sight, he returned to offer us a passage on shore, as in a few days his

cruise would be out, and he would then stand in for a Spanish port.

This was a tempting offer; but I, for obvious reasons, refused it;-and rightly, for a few days after we were boarded by the Flora frigate, who had captured this identical privateer. And had I been found on board of her, it might have supplied a pretext, which neither the torture of my servant nor the seizure of my papers had yet afforded. And my enemies would not then have been forced to resort to that scandalous falsehood, that I had corrupted the people in a fishing town in Wales.

At length, not having wherewithal to support life another day, we with difficulty entered the port of St. Sebastian.

LETTER XXIV.

Again threatened with arrestation-Remonstrance-Municipality of Bayonne arrêté motivé-Arrival in France.

HERE I applied to don Louis Blondel de Drouhol, the commandant or captain-general, for a passport to proceed by land to my destination; where I certainly did hope to learn at last the cause of such extraordinary treatment. And I was now very willing that the dogger should make the rest of her passage without me. Don Louis first threatened to arrest me as a subject of the king of Great Britain, then at war with his king. Nor could I well avail myself in this instance of the passports of the duke of Portland and the marquis Cornwallis. If they had not served me in Portu

gal, still less could they do so here. Yet I did produce them; for I was determined at all events to deal with candour, and to oppose nothing to such complicated vexation but simplicity and truth. I offered, besides the testimony of Mr. Rivet, that of the captain, and our servants, that we were sent away by force. I produced also the passport of the minister of Portugal, then in strict alliance with Spain; and also the certificates of the English consul, the Danish ambassador and consul, the French minister in Portugal, and other proofs, all showing, beyond doubt, that I was sent for reasons of state from Lisbon to Bourdeaux. And, since this was apparently done by the concurrence of so many ministers, it was to be presumed it was for some good or great purpose, though I protested I knew not what those reasons could be: but merely hoped that the principles of civilization were not yet so lost in Europe, that an individual could be seized upon, as if by pirates, and transported by them from place to place, by sea and by land, from dungeon to dungeon, without some account finally to be rendered of such proceedings. At Bourdeaux alone, I stated, I could expect to have that satisfaction, and there I looked for it confidently; as I was sure the diplomatic agents of so many kings would not deliberately join to prostrate those laws, and openly violate without motive those received notions of natural right and justice, by which their right to govern and their titles to their thrones were alone secured. I moreover stated what I had already suffered on board of this ship; what the state of my health was; and I prevailed finally to obtain a passport to follow my destination as far as the frontiers of France, where I might explain myself, as I best could, with the authorities of that country.

With this passport I arrived at Bayonne, where I appeared before the municipality, and was desired to return, the quicker the better, to the place I came from; for that, otherwise, I should be put in prison,

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To this I replied, with warmth, that I had heard it proclaimed that France was to be the terre hospitalière, where the persecuted were to find a refuge. But if I, who had no other crime than the love of my country, of human liberty and justice, and who had not come into this land from any motive of curiosity or caprice, but by misfortune and necessity, which gives a title to humanity in every country: if I was now to be driven back into other hands, where I might expect at least a renewal of the wrongs I had already suffered, it might be said that hospitality and justice were banished from the earth. That I wanted nothing more than to go to Bourdeaux, where alone I could hope for some clue to my situation, or the acquaintance of some person of my own country, by whose interest I might have the means of present existence; or, when it should appear prudent, of removing elsewhere. And, above all, some news of my family, touching whom I have been so long and so cruelly in pain.

The loyalty with which I uttered this disposed the assembly in my favour. There were some also of the members who had known something of me by reading the English papers, and if more were wanting, the prisoners of war, who had been confined at the same time with me in the castle of St. George, in Lisbon, arrived at this instant, and Mr. Rivet exerted himself with zeal.

Mr. Bastereche, the commissary of the executive power, who had at first spoken with so much sternness, now expressed his desire of serving me as far as his duty would permit, and in the first instance I was allowed to remain in Bayonne until he should write to the minister of the police for his decision.

This was in the month of June, 1799, a critical moment in France. The spirit of party was mounted to an extravagant height, and a stranger had little chance for repose in such a conflict. Bayonne was a frontier town, and guarded with jealousy. The remainder of the sum of one hundred pounds, which I had received