126 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



which Audubon had borrowed from his friend, and as 

 the ship was then ready to sail, the date of his voyage 

 on the Hope is very closely fixed. 



After his vessel had passed Sandy Hook and was 

 opposite New Bedford, the captain, in order, as he 

 averred, to make necessary repairs, ran her into that 

 port, where they passed a week. This was thought to 

 be only a ruse on the captain's part to gain time, for, 

 having recently married, he wanted a holiday on shore ; 

 accordingly he had ordered a few holes bored below 

 the waterline in the bows of his ship. When they finally 

 put to sea in earnest, they passed "through an im- 

 mensity of dead fish floating on the surface of the wa- 

 ter," a remark which now recalls stories of the famous 

 tilefish, once thought to be extinct, which have been 

 found floating dead in vast numbers in that part of the 

 Atlantic. After nineteen days out the Hope entered 

 the Loire and anchored at Paimboeuf, the lower harbor 

 of Nantes ; this was in February, and not far from the 

 eighteenth of that month. 



