We bore down on her, with the wind on our bow, after hoisting French colours. At the second discharge of our guns she struck, before we could board her; and, putting the crew down into the hold, we made for Bergen in Norway, where our cargo of mahogany was soon disposed of.
I remained six months on board the Barras, and my share of the prizes was pretty considerable, when we went to lay up for a time at Ostend. We have already seen that this city was always unpropitious to me; and what now happened to me almost made me a convert to fatalism. We had scarcely got into the basin, when a commissary, gendarmes, and police agents, came on board to examine the papers of the crew; and I afterwards learnt that the object of this unusual visitation was, that a murder having been committed, it was conjectured that the assassin might have taken refuge with us.
When my turn came for examination, I asserted that I was Auguste Duval, born at l'Orient; and added, that my papers were at Rotterdam, in the office of the Dutch marine department. No notice was taken, and I thought I had well got rid of the affair. When the three hundred men who were on board had been questioned, eight of us were called, and told that we must go to the register-office, to give the requisite explanation. Not liking this, I turned off at the first angle of the street, and had already gained thirty yards on the gendarmes, when an old woman, who was washing the steps of a house, put her broom between my legs and I fell. The gendarmes came up to me and put on handcuffs, besides belabouring me pretty well with the butts of carbines and the flat sides of swords, and I was conducted thus to the commissary, who, after hearing me, asked me if I had not escaped from the hospital of Quimper. I saw that I was caught, for there was equal danger as Duval or Vidocq. However, I decided on the first
