batteries of six guns each, built upon opposite headlands forming the entrance to the bay, opened fire upon us, and with such effect that within five minutes we had been hulled seven times, and had lost two men killed and five wounded. This afforded the skipper all the information that he just then required, namely, the fact that batteries existed, and also the exact position and strength of them—it now appearing that they were armed with 32-pounders. We therefore hove about and got out of range again as quickly as possible; for, as the Captain said, it was no good returning the fire of earthwork batteries; we might have plumped into them every shot we had on board without doing them a farthing’s-worth of damage, while, had we attempted to force a passage into the bay with the frigate, they might easily have sunk us.

But the fun was not yet over; as a matter of fact it had really not begun—the affair of the batteries was merely the overture of the little drama which was taking shape in the skipper’s brain. We stretched off the land until we were about three miles distant from the mouth of the bay, and then the ship was hove-to and preparation was made for the dispatch of a cutting-out expedition; that is to say, an attack upon the Indiaman by the frigate’s boats, with the object of overpowering her prize-crew, cutting her cables, and bringing her out of the harbour.

The launch, yawl, and the two cutters were the boats told off by the Captain for this service, and as soon as the frigate was hove-to the fighting crews of these boats—consisting of the very pick of the ship’s crew—were piped away, the boats hoisted out, and the preparation of the craft for the service which they were about to undertake proceeded with. Each of the boats named possessed, as part of her fighting equipment, a gun mounted in the bows upon fore-and-aft slides, those belonging to the launch and yawl being 18-pounder carronades, while the first and second cutters each mounted a 12-pounder. As soon as the boats were in the water they were taken charge of temporarily by their respective coxswains—the best four men in the ship—who at once proceeded to supervise the shipping and mounting of the guns, each coxswain assuring himself, by personal inspection, that this important piece of work was properly executed. The amount of shot likely to be required was next passed down into the boats and carefully stowed upon the bottom-boards, every precaution being taken to provide against it breaking adrift with the rolling and pitching of the boats. The chests containing cartridges for the guns and ammunition for the small-arms were next passed in and stowed, and finally a couple of beakers of water were placed in each boat, together with a small quantity of spirits for use, if necessary, in reviving the wounded. This completed the preparation of the boats for the projected expedition, and was done by the ordinary crews of the boats, the fighting crews meanwhile busying themselves in examining the flints of their pistols, fitting new ones where necessary, loading the pistols and sharpening their cutlasses.

At length the coxswains reported the boats ready, whereupon the officers told off to command them went down the side and carefully inspected them, satisfying themselves that nothing had been forgotten. Then the members of the expedition were mustered on the quarter-deck and inspected by the first lieutenant, who examined each man’s weapons and equipment before passing him for service. The officers appointed to proceed upon the expedition were Mr Adair, the first lieutenant, in charge of the launch and in supreme command of the entire expedition; Mr Trimble, the master, in charge of the yawl; Mr Purvis, the gunner, in the first cutter; and Mr O’Donnel, the boatswain, in the second. In addition to these there also went Mr Burroughs, the assistant surgeon, and myself in the launch, and a midshipman in each of the other boats. As I anticipated the possibility of hot work before all was done, I took the precaution to discard my dirk and to provide myself, in place thereof, with a ship’s cutlass and a pair of loaded pistols.

The inspection at length satisfactorily ended, the first lieutenant reported to the Captain that all was ready; the Captain—who had already arranged his plans with the officers commanding—gave the word to man boats and shove off, and in another couple of minutes we had started, and the frigate had filled away and was heading to seaward.

Not so the boats. The Captain and Mr Adair, discussing together the plan of operations, had come to the conclusion that it would not be of the slightest use to attempt to bring out the Indiaman in the face of those two batteries which had already given us so convincing a taste of their quality; it had therefore been arranged that, upon shoving off, the boats should be formed into two divisions for the purpose of attacking the batteries and spiking the guns. This, accordingly, was now done, the launch and first cutter forming the starboard division, destined to attack the battery on the western headland, while the yawl and the second cutter, led by the master, constituted the port division, the mission of which was to silence effectively the battery on the eastern headland of the harbour. The first lieutenant and the master made a few brief final arrangements, and then the divisions separated, each steering for its own proper headland, the senior officer leading and the other following close behind, so as to show as inconspicuously as might be on the dark surface of the water, and thus, if luck favoured us, take the Frenchmen unawares.

Meanwhile, the night was passing rapidly away; for we had scarcely got clear of the frigate when seven bells of the middle watch was struck, and, it being then the middle of August, we might expect daylight very shortly, when a surprise would at once become an impossibility; the word was therefore passed for the oarsmen to give way at top speed, and away we all went, as if for a wager, the two divisions heading respectively south-west and south-east, in the hope that we might get close enough in with the land to escape detection, and even possibly to land, before the coming dawn betrayed us.

Now, although we were travelling at racing pace, our progress was practically noiseless, the only sounds being the dip of oars in the water and the lap and gurgle of the water about the boats’ bows, Captain Vavassour having already had the oars of these boats fitted to work in rope grummets shipping over a single stout pin, instead of in the usual rowlocks, and since much care had been used to render the grummets tight-fitting, while the leathers had been well greased, there was none of the usual rattle of oars in rowlocks,—a sound which in quiet weather may often be heard at an almost incredible distance,—nor, thanks to the greasing of the leathers, was there any creaking or grinding of the oars against the pins; and of course no conversation was permitted beyond an occasional whispered order to the coxswain.

In this fashion, then, we pulled shoreward, the distance to be traversed being about three miles; and when at length the dawn broke and there was light enough to enable us to see where we were, we—the starboard division—found ourselves about a quarter of a mile distant from the beach, with both batteries shut out from our view by a slightly projecting bluff; and, thus far, nothing had occurred to lead us to suppose that we had been either heard or seen. As for the frigate, she had disappeared, probably behind Cape Fréhel; there was nothing, therefore, so far as we could see, to put the French on the alert, or to alarm them in any way. We, therefore, now headed the boats straight in for the beach, catching a momentary glimpse as we did so of the other division, apparently doing the same thing.

The beach for which we were heading was composed of firm red sand, sloping rather steeply down into the water, and the sea was smooth; we, therefore, rushed them in until they were high and dry for nearly a quarter