"He said that I could only have a little fishing-smack; and then I saw what he was driving at. He explained his scheme, and I proceeded to carry it out.
"I took the fishing-smack, and had thirty-five armed men concealed in her hold; then I had a calf, a sheep, and four or five geese on deck, and three men who were in fishermen's clothes. We stood out past Sandy Hook as though we were going to the fishing-banks. The Eagle gave chase, and we tried to escape; but she overhauled us easily, as we knew she would. When we got alongside of the Eagle the captain saw the live-stock we had on board, and ordered us to go to the Poictiers, which was then several miles away to the eastward. I parleyed with the captain till the smack touched the sides of the Eagle, and then one of my men on deck gave the watchword, 'Lawrence!'
"Instantly the hatches were thrown off, and the men swarmed up from below! As they came up they fired at every man they saw on the Eagle, killing the captain and two others, and astonishing the rest of the crew so that they ran below. Then I ordered the firing to cease; and as soon as I had done so, one of the Eagle's crew came up and lowered her colors. At the same time my men swarmed into the sloop; and in five minutes we had her headed to New York, where we arrived with our prisoners, and were received with great enthusiasm.
"This happened on the Fourth of July, so that our performance was celebrated along with the Declaration of Independence. So sudden was our onslaught upon the Eagle that she did not fire her heavy brass howitzer, which had a double charge of canister-shot, all ready to repel an attack of this sort. We drew the charge of shot, and fired the howitzer after we got to New York, as a part of the celebration."
Another of my prison companions was Mr. Johnson, who was second mate of the clipper-built schooner Rossie, that sailed from Baltimore about the middle of July, in the first year of the war. She carried fourteen guns and a hundred and twenty men, and was commanded by Commodore Barney. He cruised along the eastern coast of the United States for forty-five days without entering a port; and Johnson said there was hardly a day without an adventure of some sort. The Rossie was either chasing or being chased, capturing English ships, and informing all American ships that she met of the outbreak of the war.
"One day," said Johnson, "we were chased by a British frigate that got within range of us, so that she hurled twenty-five or thirty shot in our direction. All of them fell short, but some only just a little. We outsailed the frigate and got away. A few days afterward we were chased by another frigate, and we outsailed her just as we did the first one.
"The next day we captured and burned the ship Princess Royal; and the day following we captured the ship Kitty, put a prize-crew on board, and sent her into port. On the second of August we captured and burned two brigs and a schooner, and also captured a brig on which we put sixty of our prisoners, and sent her as a cartel to St. John, New Brunswick, to make exchange for American prisoners. Four vessels in one day was pretty good work, wasn't it?"
We all agreed that it was.
"Well," continued Johnson, "we did just as well the day after that when we captured and sunk the brig Henry, and the schooners Race-horse and Halifax; captured and manned the brig William, and added forty prisoners to the sixty we'd already put on board the cartel. Those two were our best days. Altogether, during our cruise of forty-five days, we seized and captured fourteen vessels. We destroyed nine, and sent five into port; and the estimated value of our prizes was over a million and a quarter dollars!"
