I obtained two-thirds of my fortune from the claimant, and with it and my wife repaired to Toulon.

For one year I enjoyed uninterrupted happiness.  My wife was everything to me, and so far from leaving her in search of variety, I could not bear to go out of the house unless she accompanied me:  but we were living much too fast, and at the end of the year I found one-third of my property had been spent.  My affection would not permit me to reduce my wife to beggary, and I determined to take some measures to secure the means of future existence.  Consulting her on the occasion, with many tears Cerise acknowledged my prudence, and having divided the remainder of my property, one half of which I laid out in merchandise, and the other I gave to her, for her support during my absence, I embarked on board of a vessel bound to the West Indies.

We made the islands without any accident, and I was extremely successful in my speculations; I began to think that fortune was tired of persecuting me, but knowing how treacherous she was, I shipped one half of my return cargo in another vessel, that I might have more than one chance.

When our captain was ready to sail, the passengers repaired on board, and amongst others a rich old gentleman who had come from Mexico, and who had been waiting for a passage home to France.  He was very ill when he came on board, and I recommended his losing a little blood, offering my services on the occasion.  They were accepted; the old gentleman recovered, and we were very intimate afterwards.  We had been about a fortnight clear of the island, when a hurricane came on, the equal to which in force I never beheld.  The sea was one sheet of foam, the air was loaded with spray, which was thrown with such violence against our faces that we were blinded; and the wind blew so strong that no one could stand up against it.  The vessel was thrown on her beam ends, and we all gave ourselves up for lost.  Fortunately the masts went by the board, and the ship righted.  But when the hurricane abated, we were in an awkward predicament; the spare spars had been washed overboard, and we had no means of rigging jury-masts and making sail.  There we lay rolling in a perfect calm which succeeded, and drifting to the northward by the influence of what is called the Gulf Stream.

One morning, as we were anxiously looking out for a vessel, we perceived something at a distance, but could not ascertain what it was.

At first we imagined that it was several casks floating, which had been thrown overboard, or had forced their way out of the hold of some vessel which had foundered at sea.  But at last we discovered that it was an enormous serpent, coming directly on towards the vessel, at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles an hour.  As it approached, we perceived to our horror, that it was about a hundred feet long, and as thick as the main-mast of a seventy-four; it occasionally reared its head many feet above the surface, and then