now moderate, he did not make sail. Presently the Commodore fired a gun,
and showed lights. It was the signal to close. "Oh, time enough," said
old Crowfoot--"what is the old man afraid of?" Another gun and a fresh c
onstellation on board the frigate. It was "an enemy in the northwest
quarter."

"Hah, hah," sung out the agent, "is it so? Major, what say you to a brush
let her close, eh?--should like to pepper her--wouldn't you--three hundred
men, eh?"

By this time we were all on deck--the schooner came bowling along under a
reefed mainsail and jib, now rising, and presently disappearing behind the
stormy heavings of the roaring sea, the rising moon shining brightly on her
canvass pinions, as if she had been an albatross skimming along the surface
of the foaming water, while her broad white streak glanced like a silver
ribbon along her clear black side. She was a very large craft of her class,
long and low in the water, and evidently very fast; and it was now clear,
from our having been unable as yet to sway up our fore--topmast, that she
took us for a disabled merchantman, which might be cut off from the convoy.

As she approached, we could perceive by the bright moonlight, that she had
six guns of a side, and two long ones on pivots, the one forward on the
forecastle, and the other choke up to the mainmast.

Her deck was crowded with dark figures, pike and cutlass in hand; we were
by this time so near that we could see pistols in their belts, and a
trumpet in the hand of a man who stood in the fore rigging, with his feet
on the hammock netting, and his back against the shrouds. We had cleared
away our six eighteen--pound carronades, which composed our starboard
broadside, and loaded them, each with a round shot, and a bag of two