The only thing left for me to do for the moment was a little blockade-running, so I resolved to bring my ship back past the Russian barrier in the Lower Danube at all risks, instead of tamely returning by land.  So great was the jealousy against me that I almost think the Turkish authorities commanding in the Danube would have been pleased if I had failed, and so come to grief.  I had with me a very fast paddle-steamer called the ‘Rethymo’; her captain and crew were what the Turks always are—­brave as lions and obedient as lambs.

I took on board a river pilot, whom I gave to understand that if he got me on shore I would blow his brains out.  Before starting I sent for my officers and crew and told them of the perhaps unnecessary dangers we should run in passing the Russian barrier, and gave to all the option of leaving or going on.  They decided to a man to go on.  I arranged my time so as to pass Ibraila and Galatz during the night.  We arrived to within thirty miles of the former place at about five o’clock in the evening, when I was met by a Turkish official who was leaving Ibraila on the war having broken out.  He was fearfully excited, and begged of me on his knees not to go to what he called certain destruction.  He told me that he had seen the Russians laying down torpedoes that same day, that the batteries were numerous, and that they were aware of my coming, &c., all of which I took with a considerably large grain of salt, and left him lamenting my mad folly, as he called it.

Now I must be candid.  I did not feel the danger.  I calculated that to put down torpedoes in a current such as was in the Danube would be a matter of time, and probably they would not succeed after all.  I had a plan in my head for passing the batteries, so as to render them harmless.  So in reality I was about to attempt no very impossible feat.  Three hours after dusk we sighted the lights of Ibraila.  The current was running quite five knots an hour; that, added to our speed of fifteen, made us to be going over the ground at about twenty knots.  It was pitch dark, and I think it would have puzzled the cleverest gunner to have hit us, though they might have done so by chance.  I determined not to give them that chance, by going so close under the bank that the guns could hardly be sufficiently depressed to hit us.

As we approached the batteries to my horror a flash of red flame came out of the funnel (that fatal danger in blockade-running), on which several rockets were thrown up from the shore, and a fire was opened at where the flame had been seen.  Meanwhile we had shot far away from the place, and closed right under the batteries.  I heard the people talking; every now and then they fired shot and musketry, but I hardly heard the whiz of the projectiles.  My principal anxiety was that we might get on one of the many banks so common in the Danube, and I had perhaps a little fear of torpedoes, especially when