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 could scarcely walk at the rate of three miles an hour. Mr. Boys had also a tumour forming on his left side, which obliged him always to lie on the right, and proved the foundation of a rheumatism, to which he has ever since been subject.

Midway between Bruges and Blankenberg, Mr. Boys and his companions found a warm friend in Madame Deriske, landlady of the Raie-de-Chat, a solitary public house; by whom they were long concealed, and ultimately enabled to escape. During the time they enjoyed her protection, Mr. Boys made no less than thirteen trips to the coast, hoping to procure a vessel of some kind; but always without success. The last of these attempts may serve as a specimen of the whole.

“On the night of the 4th Mar. 1809, finding several vessels nearly afloat, I returned to our party with the joyful information. Furnished with provisions and a lantern, we proceeded silently to the water’s edge, and jumped on board the easternmost vessel, in the pleasing confidence of having at length evaded the vigilance of the enemy, and of being on the eve of restoration to our native soil. The wind was fresh and squally from the W.N.W., with a good deal of swell; the moon, although only three days after the full, was so obscured by dark clouds, that the night was very favorable for our purpose. The vessel was moored by five hawsers; two a-head, and three a-stern: it was arranged, that Whitehurst and Mansell should throw overboard the latter. Hunter and myself the former; this was preferred to cutting them. We had been so long in Flanders, and received such protection from the natives, that all harsh feeling which might have existed towards an enemy, was so mellowed into compassion for their sufferings under the Corsican yoke, that we were unwilling to injure one of