Leaving all these cripples to patch themselves up as best they could, Captain Laine set sail with his frigate and gave me orders to follow.  We reached Sacrificios, the nearest anchorage to Vera Cruz, after a rapid passage.  Here we learnt that the captain of the Medee, M. Leray, had been sent on a mission to Mexico.  Then the admiral himself went off to Xalapa, to confer with the Mexican ministers.  Meanwhile the blockade went on, enlivened by privations of every kind, short rations of water, yellow fever, and so forth.  Our water was brought from Havana; it came in barrels, and was frequently black and nauseous when it came out of them.  Yellow fever stalked abroad.  I lingered one night, fishing over the side of the ship, until eleven o’clock, with a strong, healthy, first-class cadet, who had been under me in the watch on board the Didon.  A foreboding of some sort seemed to weigh on his mind.  I tried to cheer him up, but all in vain.  By six o’clock next morning the terrible “vomito” had carried him off.  Poor Gouin!  I was very fond of him.  We buried him on the Sacrificios islet, that gloomy cemetery which later on the Zouaves christened the “Jardin d’Acclimatation.”

But little happened to vary the monotony of those weeks of waiting.  I had gone in my boat one day to take soundings in shore, along the coast stretching from Vera Cruz to Anton Lizardo, when I saw a squadron of Mexican Lancers in their great white hats, looking like a squadron of picadors from a bull-ring, come galloping over the sand-hills.  It was more than likely these gentry might fire their carbines at us, and we had no arms to reply with.  So I bethought me of an expedient, which turned out quite successful.  Instead of retiring as fast as we could row, I ordered my crew to lie motionless on their oars, while with the help of two men I made as though I were carefully preparing, loading, and laying a heavy gun, which was nothing more than a large-sized telescope with which I happened to be provided.  The effect was electric.  We saw the Mexican squadron make off full tear in every direction, to the delight of my crew.  One night we had another adventure.  The admiral sent me, with Messrs. Desfosses and Doret, and two engineer officers, Commandant Mangin-Lecreux and Captain Chauchard, to make rather an odd sort of reconnaissance.  To understand its nature, my readers must know that the fort of Saint Juan d’Ulloa is set on a great reef, separated from Vera Cruz by a narrow arm of the sea.  On the edge of the reef looking towards the town, the walls of the fort, into which huge iron rings for mooring big ships are built, go perpendicularly down into the sea.  On the opposite side the glacis runs into a sort of large lake formed by two arms of the reef, level with the surface of the sea.  The admiral wanted to know whether the bed of this lake was level, whether it was fordable, and whether, in case of necessity, the glacis and the walls of the fort could be reached from it, after they had been gutted by the big guns.