ad seen my
husband bound in the boat had seen him sink.

"'No quarter to any one of them!' roared Watts when he heard this; 'the
cowards lashed Captain Eury and poor Mr. Myson to the bows of the boats,
and our own fire has killed them.'

"He sprang to the third gun, the white seaman to the fourth, and waited
for the other three boats, which, undaunted by the dreadful slaughter,
were dashing on bravely. Again the guns were fired, and again a united
yell of delight broke from our crew when one of the boats was swept
from stern to stern with the deadly grape and filled and sank. The two
others, however, escaped, and in another moment were alongside, and
the officer in command, followed by his men, sprang at the boarding
nettings, and began hacking and slashing at them with their cutlasses,
only to be thrust back, dead or dying, by our valiant crew, and the now
blood-maddened natives. Nine or ten of them did succeed in gaining a
foothold on the deck, by clambering up the bobstay on to the bowsprit,
and led by a mere boy of sixteen, made a determined charge; a native
armed with a club sprang at the youth and dashed out his brains, though
at the same moment a Frenchman thrust him through the body with his
cutlass. But the boarding party were simply overwhelmed by numbers, and
in less than five minutes every one of those who had reached the deck
were slaughtered with but a loss of three men on our side. Those still
remaining in the boats alongside then tried to draw off, but Watts, who
was now more like a mad animal than a human being, calling to some of
the crew to help him, himself cut down the boarding netting, and lifting
one of the 6-pounders, hurled it bodily into one of the boats, smashing
a large hole through it. Then a score of naked natives leapt into the
remaining one, and cut and stabbed the crew till not a living soul
remained. Some indeed had tried to swim to the shore a few minutes
earlier, but these poor wretches were met by canoes, and their brains
beaten out with clubs. The memory of that awful day of carnage will be
with me if I live to be a hundred.

"As soon as possible Watts and the carpenter restored some order among
our native allies, who, according to their custom, were beheading and
otherwise mutilating the bodies of the enemy. We found that we had lost
four killed and had about thirteen wounded. Of those killed two were
white men.

"Then taking with me half a dozen natives, I went off in one of o