in
considerable danger.

Our men bestowed no small amount of abuse on the French for trying to
deprive us of the frigate, when they could not keep her for themselves.

Our captain ordered three guns to be fired at her as we passed within a
quarter of a mile of the shore; but though some of hers might have been
brought to bear on us, not one was discharged. We then stood off and
hove-to. The boats were lowered and manned, our first lieutenant going
in command of them, with directions to effect the destruction of the
frigate. The heavy surf breaking against her bottom, and sweeping round
towards the side turned to the shore, made it difficult and dangerous
work to attempt boarding her.

The tide was now falling, and a considerable number of the French crew
seeing us coming, in spite of the risk of being swept away, plunged into
the water, and partly by swimming and partly by wading, managed to reach
the beach. None of them made any attempt to defend the ship, nor did we
molest the poor fellows who were making for the land.

At length we managed to get up to the ship, when the captain and several
of his officers surrendered themselves as prisoners. We also took off a
few Portuguese seamen, who had been taken out of two captured Brazil
ships. We were soon joined by the boats of the _Artois_ and the
_Sylph_, which had in the meantime approached. The former was now
standing off the shore, while the _Sylph_ came close in to protect the
boats should the French seamen venture to attack us.

Having put the prisoners on board the _Artois_ and _Galatea_, we
returned once more to effect the destruction of the frigate. The
rollers, however, went tumbling in on shore with so much fury that the
boats would probably have been lost had we made the attempt. We
therefore had to wait patiently until the rising tide should enable us
with less hazard to get up to the ship. Meantime we took the _Sylph_ in
tow, and carried her to within seven hundred yards of the shore, where,
dropping her anchor, she got a spring on it, and began firing away at
the frigate, so as to riddle her bottom and prevent the possibility of
her floating off at high water. At last we once more pulled in, the
tide allowing us to approach close to the beach, when Mr Harvey, in
whose boat I was, went on shore with a flag of truce to tell the French
seamen, who were gathering in considerable numbers on the sand-hills,
that we were about to destroy their ship