This Fact, For The Honour Of The Island, I Am Now In A Position To Deny; And I Here Declare That, As Far As I Had The Indiscretion To Observe, Those Maligned Ladies Appeared To Me As Buxom In Form As Any Rosy English Girl I Have Ever Seen.

It was nearly nine o'clock before we adjourned from the "Reine Hortense," to the ball.

Already, for some time past, boats full of gay dresses had been passing under the corvette's stern on their way to the "Artemise," looking like flower-beds that had put to sea, - though they certainly could no longer be called a parterre; - and by the time we ourselves mounted her lofty sides, a mingled stream of music, light, and silver laughter, was pouring out of every port-hole. The ball-room was very prettily arranged. The upper deck had been closed in with a lofty roof of canvas, from which hung suspended glittering lustres, formed by bayonets with their points collected into an inverted pyramid, and the butt-ends serving as sockets for the tapers. Every wall was gay with flags, - the frigate's frowning armament all hid or turned to ladies' uses: 82 pounders became sofas - boarding-pikes, balustrades - pistols, candlesticks - the brass carronades set on end, pillarwise, their brawling mouths stopped with nose-gays; while portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, busts, colours draped with Parisian cunning, gave to the scene an appearance of festivity that looked quite fairy-like in so sombre a region.

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