to conduct these vessels to Marseilles, and I will execute it."

"You, individually, can do what may seem to you best," answered the
Englishman; "as to the merchant vessels under your escort, they will be,
I repeat to you, taken to Admiral Collingwood." And he immediately gave
orders to those vessels to set sail to the East.

The frigate had already gone a little distance when she perceived that
we were steering towards Marseilles. Having then learnt from the crews
of the merchant vessels that we were ourselves laden with cotton, she
tacked about to seize us.

She was very near reaching us, when we were enabled to enter the port of
the little island of Pomègue. In the night she put her boats to sea to
try to carry us off; but the enterprise was too perilous, and she did
not dare attempt it.

The next morning, 2d of July, 1809, I disembarked at the lazaretto.

At the present day they go from Algiers to Marseilles in four days; it
had taken me eleven months to make the same voyage. It is true that here
and there I had made involuntary sojourns.

My letters sent from the lazaretto at Marseilles were considered by my
relatives and friends as certificates of resurrection, they having for a
long time past supposed me dead. A great geometer had even proposed to
the Bureau of Longitude no longer to pay my allowance to my authorized
representative; which appears the more cruel inasmuch as this
representative was my father.