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After being on board about a week a cartel was fitted out for France, and I was sent on board as a French prisoner. The cartel was ordered for St. Maloes, and after a passage of thirty-two days we arrived safe at that place. "Finding no American vessel at St. Male's, I went to the Commandant, and procured a pass to go by land to Port l'Orient.
It was already dark when he brought his ship into action, and laid her alongside L'Orient. One particular only I shall add to the known account of the memorable engagement between these ships, and this I received from Sir Alexander Ball himself.
Bonaparte wrote to him on this occasion: "The picture you have sent me of the disaster of l'Orient, and of your own dreadful situation, is horrible; but be assured that, having such a miraculous escape, DESTINY intends you to avenge one day our navy and our friends." This note was written in August, 1798, shortly after Bonaparte had professed himself a Mussulman.
Suddenly there was a sound as if the earth were rent asunder. In one pointed mass of flame up went the tall masts, and spars, and the decks of the huge `L'Orient. They seemed, in one body of fire, to rise above our mastheads, and then down they came, spreading far and wide, hissing into the water among the boats and the hundreds of poor wretches struggling for their lives.
This gentleman sailed from Port l'Orient July the 18th, 1738, and on the 1st of January, 1739, discovered a country, the coasts of which were covered with ice, in the latitude of 54 degrees south, and in the longitude of 28 degrees 30 minutes, the variation of the compass being there 6 degrees 45 minutes, to the west.
Captain Hallowell wisely refrained from firing on her, saying that, if she was an enemy, she was too much disabled to escape. He passed on, therefore, and, as we have said, took the station and the duty from which the other had been driven. The huge L'Orient was now surrounded.
They fully approved of the idea of sending to L'Orient for assistance, for their little port could not offer the necessary resources. It was agreed that two of them should depart in the little steamer with Mr. Hersebom and Otto, as soon as the moon arose above the horizon. While they were waiting for it to do so, they gave some account of the place where they were shipwrecked.
A sudden and peculiar motion was felt in the ship, and it was found that she had got entangled with the main rigging of one of the French vessels astern of the L'Orient. Instantly men were sent aloft to cut clear, but before this could be accomplished a perfect storm of shot and shell was sent into them from the towering sides of the three-decker.
On the 13th of April, she fell in with the French frigate l'Unité, on her way from l'Orient to Rochefort, having on board, as passengers, the governor's lady, Madame la Large, and her family. The Revolutionaire, which was ordered to chase in shore to cut off the enemy from the land, came up with her a little before midnight.
On the voyage Landais's eccentricity caused his friend Lee to put him under arrest, and on the arrival in America, a court of inquiry found him unfit for command, and he never again burdened the service. Jones was left at L'Orient with the little Ariel, armed with eighteen twelve-pounders and four six-pounders, a ship loaned by the king to Dr.
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