Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked.  If Nolan had compared George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, “God save King George,” Morgan would not have felt worse.  He called the court into his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet, to say,—­

“Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court!  The Court decides, subject to the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the United States again.”

Nolan laughed.  But nobody else laughed.  Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute.  Even Nolan lost his swagger in a moment.  Then Morgan added,—­

“Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver him to the naval commander there.”

The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.

“Mr. Marshal,” continued old Morgan, “see that no one mentions the United States to the prisoner.  Mr. Marshal, make my respects to Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board ship.  You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here this evening.  The Court is adjourned without day.”

I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings of the court to Washington city, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson.  Certain it is that the President approved them,—­certain, that is, if I may believe the men who say they have seen his signature.  Before the “Nautilus” got round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with the prisoner on board, the sentence had been approved, and he was a man without a country.

The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily followed ever after.  Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans.  The Secretary of the Navy—­it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do not remember—­was requested to put Nolan on board a government vessel bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the country.  We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of favor; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I have explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was.  But the commander to whom he was intrusted,—­perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw, though I think it was one of the younger men,—­we are all old enough now,—–­regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan died.

When I was second officer of the “Intrepid,” some thirty years after, I saw the original paper of instructions.  I have been sorry ever since that I did not copy the whole of it.  It ran, however, much in this way:—­

“Washington (with a date, which must have been late in 1807).