This had happened during the first eight minutes of the engagement, and so accurate was the gunnery of the Americans that the main-topmast and the topsail yard of the Englishman were soon shot away, and a position gained whence a raking fire was kept up for some twelve minutes.
Suddenly it was noticed that the enemy was not replying, although the colors were still flying at the mast-heads.
THE “ENTERPRISE” HULLING THE “BOXER”
McCall gave orders to cease firing, and then through the smoke came a hoarse voice hailing the American brig. “Cease firing there!” it said. “We have surrendered.”
“Why don’t you haul down your colors?” returned McCall through the trumpet.
“We can’t, sir. They are nailed to the mast,” was the reply.
A boat was lowered from the Enterprise, and McCall climbed to the deck of his late antagonist. She proved to be His Britannic Majesty’s brig Boxer, 14 guns, that a few minutes before had been commanded by Samuel Blyth, a brave officer, who burned to distinguish himself, and had gone into action determined to follow the example of Sir Philip Vere Broke, and lead “a captured Yankee into Halifax Harbor”—so he had expressed himself. But he had not lived to see the outcome of the action. At the same time that Burrows fell on board the Enterprise, Blyth was killed by a cannon-shot on the quarter-deck of the Boxer.
His first officer came back with Lieutenant McCall, and approached the wounded Burrows, who yet refused to be carried below. The doctor had pronounced that he had but a few hours at most to live.
When he received the sword of his enemy, he grasped it in both hands. “I am satisfied,” he said; and soon afterwards he was covered with the flag below in his own cabin—“a smile on his lips,” wrote one of the officers.