It was a wearisome journey by river and forest and swamp to New Orleans in the swelter of the July heat, but I pushed on by horse and boat to the mosquito-and-fever-plagued city of the . Having long since become hardened to the of the Southern insect pests and to the dangers of ague, dengue, and yellow , I endured the first with resignation and braved the last without a qualm.  
The sight of the creole city, with our glorious flag afloat above the bold little forts, St. Louis and St. Charles, filled me with joy and a sense of . This marked my point of departure in the crossing of the , which alone, I hoped, now separated me from my lady. Though, even with the of our native-born Americans since the , the city could claim only nine thousand inhabitants, the amount of its trade and was enormous. Among the scores and hundreds of sea-going craft which lay along the and the levees or swung at anchor in the stream, I felt certain I should find one to bear me to Vera Cruz.
 
Of all the merchants of the city, I knew that few if any stood so well with the Spanish authorities in the New World or carried on so extensive a trade with the Spanish colonies as my acquaintance, Mr. Daniel Clark. Accordingly I waited upon him the evening of my arrival, and stated my keen desire to obtain passage to Vera Cruz.
 
He took occasion to congratulate me on my share in the expedition, a general account of which had come to him, I suspect through secret sources of communication with the Spaniards. He, however, shook his head over my request for advice and assistance, until, in desperation, I confessed that the object of my intended voyage was to meet the lady to whom I was .
 
"Why did you not tell me that at the first, sir?" he snapped. "I set you down for an agent of that double-dealing scoundrel and James Wilkinson."
 
"Mr. Clark," I replied, "General Wilkinson will, I presume, be subjected to the searching cross-examination of the counsel for Colonel Burr. Personally I have little for the General, and have so expressed myself in the past. But for the present I think it only just to him, as to Colonel Burr, to await the publication of the facts of this deplorable scandal and the verdict of the trial."
 
"Ay, ay! You can take a dispassionate view, doctor. You have not shared in all the heat and of this last year. Very well. Be as nonpartisan as you wish, just so you do not join in the hounding of honorable men who chanced to show courtesies to that misguided dreamer, Burr."
 
"Sir, I have no other thought, no other object in life that I can consider until I have returned this to my lady," I said, showing him the rosary.
 
He turned to his , and at once wrote a letter in a neat, clerky hand. Having folded and addressed it, he handed it to me unsealed.
 
"Present that to Monsieur Lafitte. You will find his , the Siren, somewhere along the water front. Wait. Are you in funds?"
 
"Enough for the present, sir. But this Monsieur Lafitte—he sails for Vera Cruz?"
 
"I have written him that you wish to land in that port. He bears papers from me which will enable you to effect a landing and a stay of a few weeks. Should you need funds to carry you through with your venture in that city, this letter will enable you to draw upon Captain Lafitte for a hundred doubloons."
 
I sought to express my , but he cut me short, and rang for his mulatto boy to show me out. As it was by now past nine o'clock and a dark, cloudy evening, I returned to my hotel for the night.
 
But sunrise found me down in the midst of the hurly-burly and confusion of the water front. Such a scene was never known elsewhere than here in the port of the Father of Waters. Rowdy rivermen from the Ohio and Mississippi settlements, and no less rowdy from the four quarters of the globe, women and dock workmen, black and white, swarthy creole merchants and weather-beaten ship's officers,—all jostling and hurrying about and levee in the cool of the early morning.
 
Upon starting to inquire, I discovered that it was not so simple a matter to find the sloop Siren as I had imagined. The slaves and creoles were polite in their replies, the sailors and rivermen gruff, but all alike expressed their inability to enlighten me.
 
At last I at a venture a splendidly built gentleman of about my own age and breadth but a full two inches taller.
 
"Monsieur," I said, noting his black hair and French features, "your pardon, but I am in search of the Siren, Captain Lafitte."
 
"Ah," he replied, eying me with a polite yet gaze. "May I request you to name your business with Captain Lafitte?"
 
"Sir," I answered, bowing, "my business with Monsieur Lafitte is private. If you cannot favor me with the location of the Siren—"
 
"If I cannot favor you with that, I can at least with the location of Jean Lafitte," he said, bowing in turn. "Monsieur, permit me to introduce myself as Jean Lafitte, at your service."
 
"Monsieur, your servant, Dr. John H. Robinson, with a letter from Monsieur Daniel Clark," I responded.
 
His fine hazel eyes glowed. "A friend of Monsieur Clark!"
 
I handed him the letter. He bowed with the polished ease of a courtier, and after a polite apology, opened and read the letter. At the end he slipped the letter into his wallet, and smilingly held out to me a shapely, bronzed hand.
 
"Monsieur Clark has explained your reason for sailing, doctor," he said, with a manner that won him my regard on the spot. "I shall be more than pleased to do all in my power to aid you. We shall first send for your chests."
 
I explained my lack of wardrobe.
 
"Sacre!" he exclaimed. "But I sail at once. Come! I have it. I lost my third mate in a brush with an English privateer last month. He was a cleanly man of much your build. You shall ship in his ."
 
I to the nearest flatboat. "That is the extent of my seamanship, Monsieur Captain."
 
He . "The clothes will fit, if the berth does not. You can save your present costume for your landing."
 
I bowed , and we at once swung along side by side to a wharf where his boat was in waiting for him. With a courtesy which I did not then appreciate, though I how it impressed the half-dozen swarthy, red-capped oarsmen, he sprang first into the stern-sheets. The moment I stepped in after him, the men pushed off. They rowed with a skill and of stroke that speedily brought us out around the brig which blocked our view, when we approached the most sloop upon which I had ever set eyes.
 
Not being a , I can only say that the Siren's masts and yards seemed to me to be unusually long, and the former strongly inclined to the stern—raked, I believe is the term. Her , which was painted a dull gray, with a narrow stripe of red, was sharp in the bow, broad and overhanging at the stern, and low-set in the water.
 
When we came aboard, I noticed that the sloop's decks were cleaner and more orderly than those of any other merchant I had seen at close quarters, and that besides a number of carronades, she carried the mainmast a great pivot-gun that could have found few mates afloat elsewhere than aboard a man-of-war. It was a long French twenty-four-pounder, which is really a twenty-six-and-a-half-pounder by English weight. As is well known, many carry no heavier longs than eighteen-pounders.
 
Observing my interested glance, Captain Lafitte said, with a smile: "As you see, doctor, Monsieur Clark is disinclined to deliver his sloop and to the Spanish privateers without a protest."
 
"Is the Siren, then, his vessel?" I asked in surprise.
 
"For this voyage, at least," he answered; and leaving me to guess what this might mean, he turned and called out a series of orders in a voice like a .
 
Instantly such a of sailors poured up from the forecastle and hatchways and rushed here and there about the decks that I wondered they did not run one another down. Between times the Captain to a grinning of a cabin-boy and told him to show me below.
 
It was three days before I again saw the deck. Once the sloop was under way, Captain Lafitte came down long enough to start me the chests of the dead third mate. This kept me occupied until the mid-afternoon, aside from the time it took me to eat the meal brought to me by the cabin-boy. Captain Lafitte remained all the time on deck with the pilot who us down to the Gulf. When at last he did come below, the sloop was pitching in a rough cross-sea and I was most disgracefully .
 
The freshening to a downright storm, we were, as I was afterwards told, compelled to run before it under a storm jib. At the time I knew only that I was too to care whether the ship floated or .
 
But on the fourth day the storm ............