was organized under the stimulus of French aggression, he was offered and accepted the command of the thirty-eight-gun frigate Constellation, a new and very beautiful vessel, splendidly officered and manned, and with heels as fast as her gun-fire was heavy.

While cruising off Antigua, on February 9, 1799, the Constellation's lookout reported a French war-ship, which, upon being overhauled, proved to be l'Insurgente, forty guns, which had the reputation of being one of the fastest ships in the world, and was commanded by Captain Barreault, an officer celebrated in the French Navy as a desperate fighter and a resourceful sailor. As the Constellation, with her crew at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming down upon him, Captain Barreault broke out the French tricolor at his masthead and fired a gun to windward, which signified, in the language of the seas, that he was ready for a yard-arm to yard-arm combat. Truxtun's reply was to range alongside his adversary, a flag of stripes and stars at every masthead, and pour in a broadside which raked l'Insurgente's decks from stem to stern. The first great naval action in which the American Navy ever bore a part had begun.

Waiting until the Constellation was well abreast of her, at a distance of perhaps thirty feet (modern war-ships seldom fight at a range of less than three miles), l'Insurgente replied, firing high in an attempt to disable the American by bringing down her rigging. Midshipman David Porter, a youngster barely in his teens, was stationed in the foretop. Seeing that the top-mast, which had been seriously damaged by the French fire, was tottering and about to fall, but being unable to make himself heard on deck above the din of battle, he himself assumed the responsibility of lowering the foretopsail yard, thus relieving the strain on the mast and preventing a mishap which would probably have changed the result of the battle. That midshipman rose, in after years, to be an admiral and the commander-in-chief of the American Navy.

Barreault, who had a much larger crew than his adversary, soon saw that his vessel was in danger of being pounded to pieces by the American gunners who were making every shot tell, and that his only hope of victory lay in getting alongside and boarding, depending upon his superior numbers to take the American vessel with the cutlass. With this in view, he ordered the boarding parties to their stations, sent men into the rigging with grappling-irons with which to hold the ships together when they touched, directed the guns to be loaded with small shot that they might cause greater execution at close quarters, and then, putting his helm hard down, attempted to run alongside the Constellation. But Truxtun had anticipated this very manœuvre, and was prepared for it. Seizing his opportunity—and in sea-battles opportunities do not last long or come often—he whirled his ship about as a polo player whirls his pony, and ran squarely across the enemy's bows, pouring in a rain of lead as he passed, which all but annihilated the boarding parties drawn up on the deck of l'Insurgente.

Foiled in his attempt to get to hand-grips with his enemy, the Frenchman sheered off and the duel at short range continued, the Constellation, magnificently handled, sailing first along l'Insurgente's port side, firing as she went, and then, crossing her bows, repeating the manœuvre on her starboard quarter. Nothing is more typical of the iron discipline enforced by the American naval commanders in those early days than an incident that occurred when this duel between the two frigates was at its height. As a storm of shot from the Frenchman's batteries came crashing and smashing into the Constellation, a gunner, seeing his mate decapitated by a solid shot, became so demoralized that he retreated from his gun, whereupon an officer drew his pistol and shot the man dead.

Time after time Truxtun repeated his evolution of literally sailing around l'Insurgente, until every gun in her main batteries had been dismounted, her crew being left only the small guns with which to continue the action. It speaks volumes for Barreault's bravery that, with half his crew dead or wounded, and with a terribly battered and almost defenceless ship, he did continue the action, his weary, blood-stained, powder-blackened men loading and firing their few remaining guns dauntlessly. Seeing the weakened condition of his enemy, Truxtun now prepared to end the battle. Before the French had time to grasp the full significance of his manœuvre, he had put his helm hard down, and the Constellation, suddenly looming out of the battle smoke, bore down upon l'Insurgente with the evident intention of crossing her stern and raking her with a broadside to which she would be unable to reply. Though no braver man than Barreault ever fought a ship, he instantly appreciated that this would mean an unnecessary slaughter of his men; so, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, he ordered his colors to be struck, and in token of surrender the flag of France slipped slowly and mournfully down. The young republic of the West had avenged the insult of Talleyrand.

It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the desperate fighting which characterized this battle, the Constellation had only two of her crew killed and three wounded, while the French loss was nearly twenty times that number. Lieutenant Rodgers and Midshipman Porter were immediately sent aboard the captured vessel with a prize crew of only eleven men. After the dead had been buried at sea, the wounded cared for by the American surgeons, and about half of the prisoners transferred to the Constellation, Rodgers set such sails on l'Insurgente as the wrecked rigging would permit, and laid his course for St. Christopher, it being understood that Truxtun would keep within hail in case his assistance was needed. During the night a heavy gale set in, however, and when day broke upon the heaving ocean the Constellation was nowhere to be seen. It was a ticklish situation in which the thirteen Americans found themselves, for they had their work cut out for them to navigate a leaking, shattered, and dismasted ship, while below decks, awaiting the first opportunity which offered to rise and overpower their captors, were nearly two hundred desperate and determined prisoners. There were neither shackles nor handcuffs on board, and the hatchcovers had been destroyed in the action, so that the prisoners were perfectly aware that, could they once force their way on deck by a sudden rush, the ship would again be theirs. But they reckoned without Rodgers, for the first men who put their heads above the hatchway found themselves looking into the muzzles of a pair of pistols held by the American lieutenant, whose fingers were twitching on the triggers. During the three days and two nights which the voyage to St. Christopher lasted, a guard of American bluejackets stood constantly around the open hatchway, a pile of loaded small arms close at hand, and a cannon loaded with grape-shot trained menacingly into the prisoner-filled hold. On the evening of the third day, after Truxtun had given her up for lost, l'Insurgente limped into port with the flag of the United States flaunting victoriously above that of France.

The 1st of February of the following year found the Constellation, still under the command of Commodore Truxtun, cruising off Guadaloupe in the hope of picking up some of the French privateers which were using that colony as a base from which to prey on our West Indian commerce. While loitering off the port of Basse