When the Belle-Poule had finished her cruise along the Guinea Coast she had orders to go to Brazil; so we set sail for Rio de Janeiro.  On our way thither we touched at He du Prince, a Portuguese possession entirely covered with coffee plantations, the produce of which connoisseurs reckon to be the best in the world.  Almost the whole of the island belonged to one lady, who did all in her power to induce our purser to give up his profession and come and manage her immense property for her.  Failing in this endeavour she sent him a keepsake, in the shape of a pair of braces embroidered by her own fair hands, just as we were departing.  We took in water at Ile du Prince, and as we had used up all our stores during our long cruise, I shipped a boat-load of yams to take the place of potatoes, and completed my victualling, during a stay of a few hours at Ascension, by taking a large number of turtle on board.  They weighed about six hundred pounds each, and did us quite well instead of fresh meat.

A sudden change came over my life at Rio de Janeiro, one which my parents had long desired.  I married.  My bride was the second daughter of the Emperor Dom Pedro, Princess Francoise, whose acquaintance I had made some six years previously, during my first visit to Brazil.  The official request for the princess’s hand was made in the King’s name by the Baron de Langsdorff, who was sent over as ambassador extraordinary for that purpose in the Ville de Marseilles.  The wedding was celebrated at the San Cristofero Palace, and a few days afterwards we started for Brest, which place we reached after a slow passage of seventy-two days against contrary winds.

On my arrival I had to give up the command of the Belle-Poule, and I did not part from the old ship, which had carried me so well and safely through so many adventures, without a pang of emotion.  I felt, when I clasped my officers’ hands in hearty farewell, that I was sure (then, at least) of meeting them again in the course of my professional career.  The painful leave-taking was when I had to say good-bye to my brave crew, a happy family, in which discipline had been so strictly established from the very outset of the voyage, that punishment had become unknown, and whose universal sense of duty had engendered that mutual affection between officers and men which is the foundation of true professional zeal and self-sacrifice.

The fine body of fighting men which four years of care and unvaryingly consistent management had brought to the highest pitch of perfection, all the brave fellows of whom I felt I could ask anything and be certain it would be performed, were to be scattered, every man to his own home.  I was never to see them again, except a few, one here and one there.  Nowadays even, after the lapse of fifty years, if chance takes me anywhere upon the seacoast, I sometimes see some old sailor’s eye fixed on me, altered as I am, as though he were searching the far depths of his memory.  All at once one hand goes up to his cap, and the other is stretched out to me with a friendly look, and the words “Do you remember such a one, topman of the maintop—­such a storm—­such an escape?”