The moment of departure had arrived; the 13th of August, 1808, we were on board, but our ship’s company was not complete.  The captain, whose title was Rai Braham Ouled Mustapha Goja, having perceived that the Dey was on his terrace, and fearing punishment if he should delay to set sail, completed his crew at the expense of the idlers who were looking on from the pier, and of whom the greater part were not sailors.  These poor people begged as a favour for permission to go and inform their families of this precipitate departure, and to get some clothes.  The captain remained deaf to their remonstrances.  We weighed anchor.

The vessel belonged to the Emir of Seca, Director of the Mint.  The real commander was a Greek captain, named Spiro Calligero.  The cargo consisted of a great number of groups.  Amongst the passengers there were five members of the family which the Bakri had succeeded as kings of the Jews; two ostrich-feather merchants, Moroccans; Captain Krog, from Berghen in Norway, who had sold his ship at Alicant; two lions sent by the Dey to the emperor Napoleon, and a great number of monkeys.  Our voyage was prosperous.  Off Sardinia we met with an American ship coming out from Cagliari.  A cannon-shot (we were armed with forty pieces of small power) warned the captain to come to be recognized.  He brought on board a certain number of counterparts of passports, one of which agreed perfectly with that which we carried.  The captain being thus all right, was not a little astonished when I ordered him, in the name of Captain Braham, to furnish us with tea, coffee, and sugar.  The American captain protested; he called us brigands, pirates, robbers.  Captain Braham admitted without difficulty all these qualifications, and persisted none the less in the exaction of sugar, coffee, and tea.

The American, then driven to the last stage of exasperation, addressed himself to me, who acted as interpreter, and cried out, “Oh! rogue of a renegade! if ever I meet you on holy ground I will break your head.”  “Can you then suppose,” I answered him, “that I am here for my pleasure, and that, notwithstanding your menace, I would not rather go with you, if I could?” These words calmed him; he brought the sugar, the coffee, and the tea claimed by the Moorish chief, and we again set sail, though without having exchanged the usual farewell.

We had already entered the Gulf of Lyons, and were approaching Marseilles, when on the 16th August, 1808, we met with a Spanish corsair from Palamos, armed at the prow with two twenty-four pounders.  We made full sail; we hoped to escape it:  but a cannon-shot, a ball from which went through our sails, taught us that she was a much better sailer than we were.

We obeyed an injunction thus expressed, and awaited the great boat from the corsair.  The captain declared that he made us prisoners, although Spain was at peace with Barbary, under the pretext that we were violating the blockade which had been lately raised on all the coasts of France:  he added, that he intended to take us to Rosas, and that there the authorities would decide on our fate.