an anchor under a battery of two guns--and
then the commodore makes the signal for boats manned and armed, to cut
her out.

"Well, sir, our first-lieutenant was in his cot, on his beam ends, with
the rheumatiz, and couldn't go on sarvice; so the second and third
lieutenants, and master, and one of the midshipmen, had command of our
four boats, and the commodore sent seven of his'n. The boats pulled in,
and carried the vessel in good style, and there never was a man hurt.
As many boats as could clap on her took her in tow, and out she came at
the rate of four knots an hour. I was coaxswain of the pinnace, which
was under the charge of the master, and we were pulling on board, as all
the boats weren't wanted to tow--and we were about three cables' length
ahead of the vessel, when I sees her aground upon a rock, that nobody
knows nothing about, on the starboard side of the entrance of the
harbour; and I said that she were grounded to the master, who orders us
to pull back to the vessel to assist 'em in getting her off again.

"Well, sir, we gets alongside of her, and finds that she was off again,
having only grazed the rock, and the boats towed her out again with a
rally. Now the Frenchmen were firing at us with muskets, for we had
shut in the battery, and as we were almost out of the musket-shot, the
balls only pitted in the water, without doing any harm--and I was
a-standing with the master on the starn-sheets, my body being just
between him and the beach where they were a-firing from. It seemed
mortally impossible to hit him, except through me. Howsomever, a bullet
passes between my arm--just here, and my side, and striked him dead upon
the spot. There warn't another man hit out of nine boats' crews, and
I'll leave you to guess whether the sailors didn't declare that he got
his death all along of murdering the cat.

"Well, sir, the men thought, as he had _fired first_, that now all was
over; only Jenkins, the boatswain's-mate, said, `that he warn't quite
sure of that.' We parts company with the commodore the next day, and
the day a'ter, as it turned out, we falls in with a French frigate. She
had the heels of us, and kept us at long balls, but we hoped to cut her
off from running into Brest, if a slant o' wind favoured us--and
obligating her to fight, whether or no. Tom Collins, the first
lieutenant, was still laid up in his cot with the rheumaticks, but when
he hears of a French frigate, he gets up, and goe