whole of the documents up in a piece of canvas, with a shot in
it ready to heave overboard when the last ray of hope had disappeared.
I stamped with rage as I saw my enemies overtaking me; I could not help
it. My men, too, eyed them as if they felt that if they had been on
board a ship in any way able to cope with such opponents, they would
speedily have given a good account of them. I scarcely knew what to
wish for. A tornado was the only thing just then likely to serve me.
It might have sent the schooner to the bottom, but if she weathered it,
I hoped that I had a chance of escaping from the big ships, which were
very likely to be widely scattered before it.

The sky, however, gave no indication of any change of the sort. Grampus
and Tom I saw pulling very long faces at each other, as much as to say,
"It's all up with us." They were too right. On came the headmost ship
with the Dolphin hand over hand, the flag of France flaunting proudly at
her peak. A shot from one of her bow guns was a significant notice to
me to heave-to. I did so with a very bad grace, and as I put down my
helm, I could not help wishing that France and all Frenchmen were swept
away into the ocean.

"They always have been, and always will be, an unmitigated nuisance to
old England!" I exclaimed, as I took a turn on the deck, while my
little craft lay bobbing away slowly at our big opponent, which, having
also hove-to, was lowering a boat to board us. Then I took up the
bundle of letters and hove them overboard, when down they sank, probably
to find a tomb in the stomach of some hungry shark.

"At all events, Messieurs Crapauds, you will not be much the wiser for
what is in them," I exclaimed with a feeling of no little bitterness.

If I did not feel inclined exactly to cut my own throat, I certainly had
a very strong wish to knock the fellows on the head whom I saw pulling
towards me. It did not take me many minutes to pack up my own wardrobe.
My people, as is usual, put on all the clothes they possessed, one over
the other, and then we all stood ready to receive our most unwelcome
visitors.

Their boat was soon alongside, and a well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking
officer jumped on board, and announced to me in English that I was a
prize to the French frigate Chermente of thirty-two guns, Captain
McNamara, an Irishman in the French service.

"It is the fortune of war," he observed. "You did your best to escape
us when you found out