Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/68

52 time, but especially at night. Paddock was undoubtedly insane, but he was tried and convicted of murder. The American Consul refusing to sign the decree, his execution did not take place immediately, although after a month or so he was publicly shot on the mole. These events did not tend to make a residence in the country seem desirable.

Three months had passed without offering any opportunity of leaving it, except to go to China, which country the young sailors did not desire to visit at that time, when there arrived in port the Baltimore-built clipper Central America, Louis Chastro, master, a privateer, bound for Cadiz in Spain, and carrying a cargo of indigo, cochineal, silver and gold, the latter chiefly in gold plate robbed from the lower coast of Chili. Captain Chastro was prevailed upon to permit Lemont to work his passage to Cadiz, where the clipper arrived in quick time without accident. Her crew, however, were not permitted to land, this being a cholera season, and vessels being ordered into quarantine at Mahone. Meantime the board of health examined the Central America's crew every morning by counting them from a boat alongside!

To avoid this fresh trial of his patience, our adventurer, before the vessel left for quarantine, deserted to the American brig Andes, Captain Lorenson, loaded with salt, and by keeping in hiding a couple of days was able to escape and return to Boston, where he arrived with scurvy in his feet in the spring of 1833, and, going to Bath, experienced that blow to his self-love, and check to the love of others, which all young souls receive on their home-comings after long absences, when they find to their discomfeiture that the world has moved on without them and they have not been greatly missed.