hose entire broadside Cochrane
himself could carry in his pockets! But in this wretched little brig,
with its four-pounders, Cochrane captured in one brief year more than
50 vessels carrying an aggregate of 122 guns, took 500 prisoners, kept
the whole Spanish coast, off which he cruised, in perpetual alarm, and
finished by attacking and capturing a Spanish frigate, the _Gamo_, of
32 heavy guns and 319 men. What we have called the impish daring and
resource of Cochrane is shown in this strange fight. He ran the little
_Speedy_ close under the guns of the huge _Gamo_, and the Spanish ship
was actually unable to depress its guns sufficiently to harm its tiny
antagonist. When the Spaniards tried to board, Cochrane simply shoved
his pigmy craft a few yards away from the side of his foe, and this
curious fight went on for an hour. Then, in his turn, Cochrane
boarded, leaving nobody but the doctor on board the Speedy. But he
played the Spaniards a characteristic trick. One half his men boarded
the Gamo by the head, with their faces elaborately blackened; and when,
out of the white smoke forward, some forty demons with black faces
broke upon the astonished Spaniards, they naturally regarded the whole
business as partaking of the black art, and incontinently fled below!
The number of Spaniards killed and wounded in this fight by the little
_Speedy_ exceeded the number of its own entire crew; and when the fight
was over, 45 British sailors had to keep guard over 263 Spanish
prisoners.

Afterwards, in command of the _Imperieuse_, a fine frigate, Cochrane
played a still more dashing part on the Spanish coast, destroying
batteries, cutting off supplies from the French ports, blowing up coast
roads, and keeping perspiring battalions of the enemy marching to and
fro to meet his descents. On the French coast, again, Cochrane held
large bodies of French troops paralysed by his single frigate. He
proposed to the English Government to take possession of the French
islands in the Bay of Biscay, and to allow him, with a small squadron
of frigates, to operate against the French seaboard. Had this request
been granted, he says, "neither the Peninsular war nor its enormous
cost to the nation from 1809 onwards would ever have been heard of!"
"It would have been easy," he adds, "as it always will be easy in case
of future wars, so to harass the French coasts as to find full
employment for their troops at home, and so to render operatio