Reaching the port of Faro, they found a good-hearted mate of a Portuguese brig who gave them a ham, four dozen biscuit and a part of a cheese. The French Consul also befriended them, and supplied a boat to take them to a port called Iammont. Although the ingenuous Luther Little explains their next adventure as pacific, it is not unfair to presume that his company committed a mild-mannered kind of piracy. However, he tells the tale in this fashion:
“We reached the mouth of the Iammont River next morning. Here we met a Spanish shallop coming out, bound to Cadiz, loaded with small fish and manned with six men. The Captain was very old. We shifted on board this shallop and sailed toward Cadiz with a fair wind. When night approached the Spanish captain having no compass, steered by a star; at ten the clouds came over and the stars were shut in, the wind blowing fresh. The Spaniards fell on their knees, imploring the aid of their saints. Directly the captain concluded to go on shore, and took his cask of oil to break the surf, and bore away toward the shore. We being the strongest party (eleven to six), hauled the shallop onto her course and obliged the old Spaniard to take the helm, it still continuing very thick. At one that morning we struck on the Porpoise Rocks at the mouth of Cadiz Bay; we shipped two seas which filled the boat. With our hats we bailed out water, fish and all, directly made Cadiz light, and ran in near the wall of the city. The sentry from the wall told us to come no nearer, whereupon the old captain hauled down sails and let go his anchor. At daylight I paid one Spanish dollar apiece passage money and we left the boat.
“We went to the gate of the city and sat down on some ship timber. One of our men was then two days sick with a fever. When the gate was opened we marched in, two of us carrying the sick man. A little way inside we met a Spaniard who spoke English. He invited us to his house, and gave us a breakfast of coffee and fish, and told us we were welcome to remain there until we could find a passage home.”
Next day Luther Little as spokesman waited upon John Jay, United States Minister to the Court of Madrid, who had come to Cadiz with his wife in the Confederacy frigate. Minister Jay put the sick man in a hospital while the others sought chances to work their way home. They found in the harbor an English brig which had captured an American ship and was then in her turn retaken by the Yankee crew who had risen upon the prize crew. According to Luther Little this Yankee mate, Morgan by name, was a first-class fighting man, for he had sailed the brig into Cadiz, flying the Stars and Stripes, with only a boy or two to help him. She carried twelve guns and needed a heavy crew to risk the passage home to Cape Ann.
Reinforced by the captain and crew of another American vessel which had been taken by an English frigate, Luther Little’s party sought Minister Jay and explained the situation. They could work their passage in the brig, but they had no provisions. Would he help them? Mr. Jay made this singular compact, that he would give them provisions if they would sign a document promising to pay for the stores at the Navy Yard in Boston, or to serve aboard a Continental ship until the debt was worked out. All hands signed this paper by which they put themselves in pawn to serve their country’s flag, and the brig sailed from Cadiz.
After thirty days they were on George’s Bank where they lay becalmed while an English privateer swept down toward them with sweeps out. A commander was chosen by vote, decks cleared for action, and two guns shifted over to the side toward the privateer. “The captain ordered his crew to quarters. When the privateer came up to us we gave her a broadside; she fired upon us, then dropped astern and came up on the larboard side,” so Little describes it. “As soon as the guns would bear upon her we gave her another broadside. They returned the same. The privateer schooner giving up the contest, dropped astern and made off, we giving her three cheers.”
Without mishap the brig arrived off Cape Ann, and continued on to Boston. There Luther Little obtained money from friends and paid off his share of the debt to the Navy Board. He was the only one of the eleven of his party who redeemed themselves, however, the others going aboard Continental cruisers as stipulated by the shrewd Minister Jay who, in this fashion, secured almost a dozen lusty seamen for the navy.
“Once more I reached home entirely destitute,” comments Luther Little, who tarried on his father’s farm a few weeks, and then once more “bade home and those dear to me, adieu.” This was in the year 1780. He entered on board the United States ship Protector, of twenty-six guns and 230 men, as midshipman and prizemaster. Her commander was John Foster Williams, and her first lieutenant, George Little, was a brother of our hero. Their names deserve remembrance, for the Protector fought one of the most heroic and desperate engagements of the Revolution of which Midshipman Little shall tell you in his own words:
“We lay off in Nantasket Roads making ready for a six months’ cruise, and put to sea early in April of 1780. Our course was directed eastward, keeping along the coast till we got off Mount Desert, most of the time in a dense fog, without encountering friend or foe. On the morning of June ninth, the fog began to clear away, and the man at the masthead gave notice that he discovered a ship to the windward of us. We perceived her to be a large ship under English colors, standing down before the wind for us. We were on the leeward side.
“As she came down upon us she appeared to be as large as a seventy-four. The captain and lieutenant were looking at her through their glasses, and after consulting decided that she was not an English frigate but a large king’s packet ship, and the sooner we got alongside of her the better. The boatswain was ordered to pipe all hands to quarters, and clear the ship for action. Hammocks were brought up and stuffed into the nettings, decks wet and sanded, matches lighted and burning, bulkheads hooked up.