s no sooner out of the hospital than,
retaining her disguise, she entered a small man-of-war--the
_Vesuvius_, which was captured by two French ships, when she was sent
to the prisons of Dunkirk. Here she was incarcerated for eighteen
months, but, having been discovered planning an escape with a young
midshipman, she was confined in a pitch-dark dungeon for eleven weeks,
on a diet of bread and water. An exchange of prisoners set her at
liberty, and, hearing accidentally an American merchant captain
inquiring in the streets of Dunkirk for a lad to go to New York as
ship's steward she offered her services, and was accepted.
Accordingly, in August, 1796, she sailed with Captain Field, and, on
arriving at Rhode Island, she resided with the Captain's family.

But here another kind of adventure was to befall her--for a niece of
Captain Field's fell deeply in love with her, even going so far as to
propose marriage. On leaving Rhode Island, the young lady had such
alarming fits that, after sailing two miles, Mary Anne Talbot was
called back by a boat, and compelled to promise a speedy return to the
enamoured young lady. On reaching England, she was one day on shore
with some of her comrades when she was seized by a press-gang, and
finding there was no other way of getting off than by revealing her
sex, she did so, her story creating a great sensation. From this time
she never went to sea again, and soon afterwards lived in service with
a bookseller, Mr. Kirby, who wrote her memoir.[44]

And the late Colonel Fred Burnaby has recorded the history of a
singular case, the facts of which came under his notice when he was
with Don Carlos during the Carlist rising of the year 1874: "A
discovery was made a few days ago that a woman was serving in the
Royalists' ranks, dressed in a soldier's uniform. She was found out in
the following manner. The priest of the village to where she belonged
happening to pass through a town where the regiment was quartered, and
chancing to see her, was struck by the likeness she bore to one of his
parishioners.

"You must be Andalicia Bravo," he remarked.

"No, I am her brother," was the reply.

The Cure's suspicions were aroused, and at his suggestion, an inquiry
was made, when it was discovered that the youthful soldier had no
right to the masculine vestments she wore. Don Carlos, who was told of
the affair, desired that she should be sent as a nurse to the hospital
of Durango, and, when he visited