alternate fat and lean formed a variety of beautiful onyxes and
sardonyx, which I disposed of very advantageously to the cameo
engravers. I was several days employed in packing up, but I had plenty
of provisions and water, and had no doubt that I should be seen by some
vessel before they were expended. Three weeks had elapsed, when one
morning I went on deck, and saw land on both sides of me. I immediately
recognised the rock of Gibraltar, and the Straits, through which I was
drifting. I was boarded by a Spanish gun-boat from Algesiras, and
having stated that all my crew had died two months before of the yellow
fever, I was towed in, put into quarantine for forty days, and then
permitted to equip my vessel and procure sailors. This I was enabled to
do by selling two of the flasks which held the water, and which, like
all the other utensils of the island from which I had escaped, were of
pure gold.

I did not think it prudent to go to Leghorn, where not only the vessel
might be recognised, and the widow give me some trouble, but the statues
also might have been identified as the men who had sailed in the vessel,
and occasion my being burnt as a necromancer by the Inquisition. I
directed my course for Naples, where I arrived in safety. Having
disembarked my metamorphosed crew, I hired a large room to exhibit them,
and expected to realise a considerable sum; but as I could not name the
artist, and the figures had not the grace which the Italians admire,
they remained on my hands, and were even found fault with as not being
well executed. I sold two of the least prepossessing to a Sicilian
nobleman, who I understood had a large country seat decorated with
monstrosities; and I then determined, as I had received a high price for
the pieces of the one which had been broken up, to retail the others in
the same way. It answered admirably, and I received more money for the
fragments than I had asked for the images in an unmutilated state. The
remainder of the golden flasks also realised a large sum; I produced
them one by one, and disposed of them to English collectors, as having
been purloined by the excavators from the ruins of Pompeii. I had now
plenty of money, and resolved to return to my native city. An
opportunity offering, I embarked, and safely arrived at Marseilles.

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"Did you fulfil your promise to the Italian captain, by having five