Meanwhile I was busily organising my little squadron at Toulon.  Twelve hundred troops, or thereabouts, for disembarkation if necessary, had been sent me, and as fast as I got my ships ready I sent them on to Oran, where we were to muster.  Just as we were starting a slight accident occurred, which if I had been superstitiously inclined might have cast a gloom over the first days of my command.  We had towed the ship Triton, with a body of marines on board, outside the port, one lovely evening.  There we met a steamboat coming from Montpellier with a company of engineers, under Captain Coffinieres, who were also to be attached to the expedition.  By some mistake in steering the ships collided.  The Triton was slightly damaged; but the steamboat lost her funnel and spars, and had her bulwarks stove in.  There was no damage to life and limb, beyond an unintentional dip I took, by falling into the sea while getting alongside the two vessels to judge for myself whether the collision was a serious one or not.  I recollect, as a small matter of detail, that while we were coming back into Toulon at night, on board the tug from which I had seen the accident, we made experiments with the electric light, and that when we turned it on an American corvette lying in the port, her watch bolted in every direction, blinded by the dazzling light darted on them suddenly, they knew not whence.  More than forty years elapsed before these experiments received any practical application.  Such is the power of routine!

But I must get back to my ships.  Having mustered them all at Oran, and opened communications with General Bugeaud, I went straight to Gibraltar, to confer with the English authorities before I did anything else; and resolved to be the first to offer in the clearest and frankest way any explanation they might desire of my intentions as to peace or war, and the part we expected neutral powers to play.  Let me say at once, that from the very first day till the end of the campaign, I never had occasion to speak otherwise than in terms of the highest satisfaction of all my relations with the officers holding command in the British naval force, and more especially with Admiral Owen, Captain Lockyer, and Captain Provo Wallis.  Our intercourse was always frank, cordial, “straightforward,” as English people call it, and very pleasant in consequence.  This was not the case when I had to do with General Sir Robert Wilson, Governor of Gibraltar, a bitter enemy to France.  In the earliest beginning of his career he had been attached to the staff of the Russian army, had been through the campaign of 1812, and borne his part in inflicting the disasters which befell us during the terrible retreat from Moscow, He played a very active part as British commissioner with the Allied Armies in 1813, behaving with great personal valour both at Dresden and Leipsic, and doing us frequent mischief by the advice he gave to the Allies.  Often, in his very interesting Memoirs,