German and French equally well; and when the sailors heard us, they, who
spoke only English, swore at us, accused us of plotting against them, and
called us Saurkrouts. At such times I pressed my child to my heart and
drew nearer to Leonard, more dead than alive. A whole month passed in this
constant anguish. At its close, fevers broke out among us, and we
discovered, to our horror, there was not a drop of medicine on board. We
had them lightly, some of us, but only a few; and [bad blot] Newman's son
and William Hugo's little daughter died, ... and the poor mother soon
followed her child. My God! but it was sad. And the provisions ran low,
and the captain refused to turn back to get more.

One evening, when the captain, his lieutenant, and two other officers
were shut in their cabin drinking, the mate, of whom I had always such
fear, presented himself before us surrounded by six sailors armed, like
himself, to the teeth, and ordered us to surrender all the money we had.
To resist would have been madness; we had to yield. They searched our
trunks and took away all that we possessed: they left us nothing,
absolutely nothing. Ah! why am I not dead? Profiting by the absence of
their chiefs they seized the [or some--the word is blotted] boats and
abandoned us to our fate. When, the next day, the captain appeared on deck
quite sober, and saw the cruelty of our plight, he told us, to console us,
that we were very near the mouth of the Mississippi, and that within two
days we should be at New Orleans. Alas! all that day passed without seeing
any land[5], but towards evening the vessel, after incredible efforts, had
just come to a stop--at what I supposed should be the mouth of the river.
We were so happy to have arrived that we begged Captain Andrieux to sail
all night. He replied that our men, who had worked all day in place of the
sailors, were tired and did not understand at all sufficiently the
handling of a vessel to sail by night. He wanted to get drunk again. As in
fact our men were worn out, we went, all of us, to bed. O great God! give