Marryat extricated himself from this pass with commendable nerve and dexterity. He faced and soft-sawdered the deputations. He took the burning of his books very coolly, went about as before, and finally had it out with his hosts at a dinner given him at Cincinnati. The speech, which is far too long to quote, is full of the manly good sense which the American, when not acting in the characters of raving journalist or anxious candidate, will commonly listen to. Marryat reminded his hearers that he had spoken in British territory to his countrymen, and that their own patriotic orators were not averse to waving the banner habitually, or restrained from doing so by the knowledge that an Englishman was present. His hosts being simply American gentlemen, sitting in their right senses, agreed with him. A somewhat dramatic finish was given to this stage of the incident by Captain J. Pierce, who had been captain of the American privateer _Ida_ when she was taken by the _Newcastle_, of which Marryat was then second lieutenant. Captain Pierce got on his legs to thank Marryat for the courtesy and good nature he had shown to himself and other prisoners. “The Wizard of the Sea,” as the American newspapers loved to call him when they were not in a flaming rage, might consider that, as far as his hosts at Cincinnati could answer for it, he was cleared of the charge of insulting the great American people. Their opinion, like that of the “respectable American,” in so many other matters, did not avail to stop all annoyance. Marryat continued to be pestered by abuse, frequently conveyed in unpaid letters. At last, and somewhat weakly, in October of 1838, he published a general protest in the form of a letter to the editors of the _Louisville Journal_, wherein he denied with much detail that he intended to spy out the barrenness of the land. He was, of course, answered as offensively as might be.
Marryat had perhaps begun by this time to discover that it was not so easy to write of America in a philosophic spirit as he had once thought. To be sure he had laid himself open to annoyance by going to the States at all, and still more by going there with the intention of writing a book.
The Canadian troubles were destined to break into his tour again. In the autumn of 1838 the French population rose in open rebellion, and, as is commonly the fate of insurgents, gained some preliminary successes, which made their final punishment all the more severe. Marryat remembering that he was an English naval officer still on the active list, gave up philosophic inquiry, hurried back to Canada, and volunteered for service under Sir John Colborne. This officer, a veteran of the Great War, and one who had had a distinguished share in winning the battle of Waterloo, made short work of the rising. Marryat saw some fighting once more in his life, and described it briefly in another of his capital letters to his mother.