was 
Be x9 
76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS’ ARAGO. 
“T have received,” answered the Barbary captain, “an 
express commission to conduct these vessels to Marseilles, 
and I will execute it.” 
“You, individually, can do what may seem to you 
best,” answered the Englishman; “as to the merchant 
vessels under your escort, they will be, I repeat to you, 
taken to Admiral Collingwood.” And he immediately 
gave orders to those vessels to set sail to the East. 
The frigate had already gone a little distance when 
she perceived that we were steering towards Marseilles. 
Having then learnt from the crews of the merchant ves- 
sels that we were ourselves laden with cotton, she tacked 
-about to seize us. : 
She was very near reaching us, when we were enabled 
to enter the port of the little island of Pomégue. In the 
night she put her boats to sea to try to carry us off; but 
the enterprise was too perilous, and she did not dare 
attempt it. 
The next morning, 2d of Jyly, 1809, I disembarked at 
the lazaretto. 
At the present day they go from Algiers to Marseilles 
in four days; it had taken me eleven months to make the 
same voyage. It is true that here and there I had made 
involuntary sojourns. 
My letters sent from the lazaretto at Marseilles were 
considered by my relatives and friends as certificates of 
resurrection, they having for a long time past supposed 
me dead. A great geometer had even proposed to the 
Bureau of Longitude no longer to pay my allowance to 
my authorized representative ; which appears the more 
cruel inasmuch as this representative was my father. 
-The first letter which I received from Paris was full 
of sympathy and congratulations on the termination of 
