To render the signal of distress an object of deeper attention to the commodore of a convoy, it should never be hoisted on trivial occasions, or any, in fact, where the unsupported exertions of the crew of the distressed vessel can by any possibility overcome the present evil. It is (or was) to the prevalence of these signals having been made on occasions which, on inquiry, were not found sufficiently urgent to sanction this mute, but powerful appeal for succour, (rather than, as I should hope, from any unfeeling indifference to the safety of the convoy,) which led many officers of the fleet to treat such signals with contemptuous neglect.

Our Jack, with the union downwards, was flying at the mizen-peak two days, during which time we hauled-up within full view of the commodore, before he condescended to let us know that he noticed us. Shortly after daylight of the third day he edged down towards us, and shortening sail when within hail, the officer on the watch appeared on the poop, demanding, "What do you want?" We expected a boat, and unfortunately had not made any selection of a spokesman; so that when the question was put, we all stared at each other unprepared to answer. The only speaking-trumpet on board had got into the hands of the little captain, whose insignificance had kept him from being of our council; and while at this hasty consultation, we had come to the conclusion to answer, "The ship has sprung a-leak! the crew is sickly! we want your carpenter and a surgeon!" We deputed the Stentorian-lunged Tom to be the organ of the announcement of our distress, and its remedy. The speaking-trumpet was missing; the boy was instantly despatched below for it: while all was breathless silence, we heard a voice forward, crying out with the trumpet's breath, "We are in a deplo-o-o-rable condition!" We almost fancied we heard the laugh this silly complaint produced; and casting our eyes to the place whence the sound proceeded, we beheld the captain with his head thrust through the foreshrouds, trumpeting forth his indefinite lamentations! on

which, one of our party sprang forward to seize the trumpet, and which I am afraid was accompanied with some rough movement; for immediately after one of the negro servants was seen picking up the sprawling captain from under the windlass. Tom made himself well understood; and the laconic answer received was "VERY WELL!"

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Very well!" ejaculated Tom, "I'll be dommed if it is VERY WELL, Mr. Commodore; naw that theer is Mon-o-War loike!" The commodore, however, dropped his foresail, squared his yard, and shooting a-head, soon left us to admire the beauty of his poop lantern, and-his politeness.

This was the commodore who had such an antipathy to the military! He is now a great man, a grand-cross, and a public functionary, and, I need scarcely add, NOT the proud, but gallant George Cockburn, who never yet turned his stern to a friend in distress, or on an enemy in power.

Thus were we at the distance of two thousand miles from the land of life-our home-our refuge-left to shift for ourselves! We suffered our inverted ensign to fly in reproachful display so long as we were able to keep company, in order that the few vessels which then composed the convoy might be able to tell the tale in case we perished.

One sternmost ship, the Grenada, West Indiaman, almost ran aboard of us, in the generous impatience of her master to afford us succour; for although the wind had somewhat lulled, the swell of the sea was immense. As we saw five human beings launched off in the captain's boat to attempt a boarding, we were incapable of expressing to each other the feelings which filled every heart at this manly effort to assist brothersailors in distress. We sometimes lost the boat for minutes: to see such an apparent nut-shell pulled up the mountainous summit of a wave, then sink again as if never more to rise, struck us with equal admiration and fear. At length it approached, and coming right into our wake, we deadened the ship's way: a coil of rope was thrown to the bowman, and, in another minute, she was on our lee quarter. The person in charge, carefully watched the precise moment for making his spring; and having made good his footing in the main-chains, the boat once more dropped astern.

A few words sufficed to explain our situation. The vessel made twenty inches water per hour, but by dint of our exertions at the pumps we kept it down to that, never letting it reach the second hour's increase; but, alas! what security had we for its remaining even at that sufficiently alarming height? One consolation we certainly had hitherto the pumps had always gained on the leak.

Our visiter went below with the mate, and after half an hour's

search, gave it as his opinion that there was no partial or extensive leak sprung in any part; that the general openness of the seams and the drying up of the caulking had made her a leaky ship altogether; but that, by constant attention, and putting a man over the side in moderate weather to overhaul the state of the seams in the upper works, we should get to England as soon as our neighbours. This afforded us some hope and consolation. "As for ourselves," added he, "we were all but capsized in that squall three weeks ago: our top-gallant mast went off smack all at once like canes; we stove sixteen puncheons of rum; and our sugar is pumped up by bushels, so that we shall have a swinging average by the time we get home." This was a civil, intelligent person; and we begged of him to make our thanks to his captain and to the passengers on board (who were Major Macnamara, 53rd, and Staff Physician Browne) for the kind interest they took in our situation. We watched his return with anxious eyes, and blessed Providence when we saw the cutter in slings once more over the Grenada's stern. We edged down towards her, and coming as close as we could, (in violation of all convoy discipline,) we military mutineers fired a gun; and standing at the side of the quarterdeck, all hands gave three hearty cheers by way of thanks. Our gun was as little attended to as our signal by the great ship, which was a league a-head, but whose movements we no longer condescended to notice, and when we did by chance, did not attend to them.

Another of our cabin-passengers died before any very alarming symptoms had prepared us for the shock. He had had a lingering fever for some days, but still crawled about to the last. He retired to his berth at the usual time, but morning's light found him a cold and stiffened corpse; so that his death must have taken place some hours before we were conscious of it. His remains passed over the side with the same ceremonies as those of his hapless predecessors, accompanied by the bodies of two poor children, who only preceded their hapless mother in the march of death by two days.

In the midst of this universal misery, we, who were yet capable of exertion, were compelled to set the example of activity, and took our turn at the pumps in common with the lowest of the crew; the gentlemen working by spells of a few minutes at a time at one pump, in competition with the seamen at the other. One of the foreigners a Dutchman, was almost the third of every hour employed in clearing the well, the pumps having been frequently rendered useless by being choked up with the masses of sand of which the ballast put in at Barba does consisted; and more than once we despaired of keeping the vessel free, except by scuttling our decks and bailing!

We were now subject to the variation of winds, and what was still more to be deplored in our situation, to the most tantalizing calms, during which our light vessel rolled gunwale to, as if each roll were to be her last.

We had now lowered topmasts, and secured every thing on deck; still it was dangerous for an inexperienced foot to tread the deck; and accustomed as I was to the motion, I neverthe less felt it prudent to take a turn of some small rope's end round my arm whenever I ventured forward to superintend the cookery for our now diminished mess. To our equal surprise and joy we discovered all at once a sensible diminution of water in the well; and it was a happy relief to our aching arms to be only obliged to pump our spell every two hours.

We were in the same ignorance as to the cause of this decrease as of that sudden increase which at first struck terror into the lion-hearted Tom Bateman. We presumed that it might have happened by some loose stuff having been carried into the leaks during the calms and heavy swells, where they formed accidental plugs. To whatever cause it was owing, our hearts were thankful for the providential relief.

At this time another of our cabin messmates, Lieutenant Doran, (our Irish interpreter,) who had for many days evinced symptoms of mental derangement, suddenly broke out into the most afflicting state of insanity. His distracted mind seemed constantly to labour under the horrid delusion that we were all in a conspiracy to murder him; and when, as much for his own safety as ours, we felt it necessary to pinion his arms, his piteous cries and shrieks for mercy would have appalled the stoutest heart! He cried out for a priest; and in order to appease him, one of us was induced to disguise himself, and assume that sacred character, and, while affecting to hear his incoherent confession, went through the forms of administering the last offices of religion-a pardonable piece of masquerade, as it tranquillized the unhappy sufferer's last hours, who, after his supposed absolution, sunk into a state of inanity, from which he never rose!

This was our fourth death in the cabin, and the FIFTEENTH altogether on board, including the poor woman and children, many of whom perished for want of care and medicine. Those of the latter who were saved owed their lives to the nourishment which we all combined our efforts to prepare for them, even in the worst weather.

We had now been nearly six weeks at sea, yet, according to our reckoning, were still fifteen hundred miles from Great Britain. For the last fortnight we had scarcely gained ten miles a day clear on our course, so baffling had the winds become. The days, too, were now so considerably shortened that

it fell dark at six o'clock, and we had twelve dreary hours or more of night, with all the horrors of a winter sea to contend with; still there were some of us who, with spirits unbroken, could occasionally indulge the laugh and joke, and pass away the dull midnight watch in song and story.

We were now visited with occasional hail-storms, attended with violent squalls, to the force of which we could offer no resistance, but scudded before the gust. In another moment a sudden shift of wind frequently took us all aback, and it required the best skill of seamanship to prevent our vessel from broaching to. Our poor negro servants felt the grievous change; and although we fortified them against cold by our cast off garments, they were now become in a great measure useless to us, being afflicted with cough and catarrh. We had, however, been taught a wholesome lesson by adversity, and became not only our own servants, but the attendants on those whose lives depended on the care and nourishment we bestowed on them.

age.

On one of my visits to the lower pest-house, I was accosted by name by a woman in the last stage of life, who stated that she was the widow of the sergeant who had been on constant duty as orderly with my late general, during our stay at Fort Bourbon. He was, I recollect, a fine, handsome young man, of about twenty-five, while she appeared nearly double that She seemed sorely afflicted in mind, and, as the last effort of her strength, solicited my attention. I had never seen her, nor, indeed, had I known that the sergeant was a married man; nor was he! This wretched woman revealed herself to me as the wife of a publican near London, who, two years before, had eloped with his young man, whose compliance she had purchased by a considerable sum of money, purloined from her unsuspecting husband.

She now felt the near approach of death, and implored my promise to visit her abused husband, in case I survived the voyage, and bear her last words of remorse and penitence to him. She had remaining in her trunk upwards of forty guineas in gold, and nearly two hundred dollars, which she consigned to my care, to be delivered to her husband. I judged it necessary to call in a witness to this poor woman's dying request, in order to authorize me to become the exccutor of her verbal will. Shortly after, she resigned her last breath in quiet, as if her agonized mind had by this effort, at once shaken of its load of guilt and terror.

The trunk, on examination, was found to contain the money she had stated, with other valuables; it was then tied up, sealed, and placed for security in the magazine, where it ultimately met the common fate of the property of all. Day after VOL. IL

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