I was the possessor of a safe-conduct from the English Admiralty; I therefore wrote a confidential letter to the captain of an English vessel, The Eagle, I think, which had cast anchor some days before in the roads at Rosas.  I explained to him my position.  “You can,” I said to him, “claim me, because I have an English passport.  If this proceeding should cost you too much, have the goodness at least to take my manuscripts and to send them to the Royal Society in London.”

One of the soldiers who guarded us, and in whom I had fortunately inspired some interest, undertook to deliver my letter.  The English captain came to see me; his name was, if my memory is right, George Eyre.  We had a private conversation on the shore.  George Eyre thought, perhaps, that the manuscripts of my observations were contained in a register bound in morocco, and with gilt edges to the leaves.  When he saw that these manuscripts were composed of single leaves, covered with figures, which I had hidden under my shirt, disdain succeeded to interest, and he quitted me hastily.  Having returned on board, he wrote me a letter which I could find if needful, in which he said to me,—­“I cannot mix myself up in your affairs; address yourself to the Spanish Government; I am persuaded that it will do justice to your remonstrance, and will not molest you.”  As I had not the same persuasion as Captain George Eyre, I chose to take no notice of his advice.

I ought to mention that some time after having related these particulars in England, at Sir Joseph Banks’s, the conduct of George Eyre was severely blamed; but when a man breakfasts and dines to the sound of harmonious music, can he accord his interest to a poor devil sleeping on straw and nibbled by vermin, even though he have manuscripts under his shirt?  I may add that I (unfortunately for me) had to do with a captain of an unusual character.  For, some days later, a new vessel, The Colossus, having arrived in the roads, the Norwegian, Captain Krog, although he had not, like me, an Admiralty passport, made an application to the commander of this new ship; he was immediately claimed, and relieved from captivity.

The report that I was a Spanish deserter, and proprietor of the vessel, acquiring more and more credit, and this position being the most dangerous of all, I resolved to get out of it.  I begged the commandant of the place, M. Alloy, to come to receive my declaration, and I announced to him that I was French.  To prove to him the truth of my words, I invited him to send for Pablo Blanco, the sailor in the service of the corsair who took us, and who had returned from his cruise a short time before.  This was done as I wished.  In disembarking, Pablo Blanco, who had not been warned, exclaimed with surprise:  “What! you, Don Francisco, mixed up with all these miscreants!” The sailor gave the Governor circumstantial evidence as to the mission which I fulfilled with two Spanish commissaries.  My nationality thus became proved.