eight ports of a side, and an English ensign and pendant, bearing down upon her. Judging from the immense size of the ensign and length of the pendant (one large enough for a line-of-battle ship, and the other longer than was worn by any British man of war), that she was an enemy's cruiser, Lieutenant Fitton tacked to speak her. Resolved, at the same time, with such apparent odds against him, to try for the weathergage, he trimmed his sails as if close hauled, and yet edged a little off the wind, to induce the schooner, who had now substituted Spanish for English colours, to come into the tender's wake. Having at length got her there, the latter hauled up, and soon weathered the Spaniard.

A brisk action now commenced, and lasted for half an hour ; when the privateer sheered off, and made sail. Lieutenant Fitton immediately proceeded in chase, and at 11 p.m., with the help of her sweeps, the Ferret again got alongside of the privateer. The action was now renewed, arid continued as long as before ; when the tender, having had her rigging and sails much cut, and being close in with San-Jago de Cuba, gave over the chase. On account of the privateer's firing high, the Ferret incurred no loss ; but it was afterwards ascertained, by the capture of some of the men belonging to the same privateer, that the latter had 11 men killed and 20 wounded, out of a crew of 100, and that she mounted fourteen 6-pounders. The inhabitants of the east end of Jamaica were spectators of the contest; and, seeing the disparity of force between the two vessels, and that the British vessel followed the privateer towards the Cuba shore, sent information to Port-Royal, that the Abergavenny's tender had been captured.

It is not the sole misfortune under which the commanding officer of a tender labours, that, while he incurs all the risk, and all the responsibility, he only shares prize-money as one of the lieutenants of the flag-ship : the case is harder where that flagship remains idle in port, otherwise the prizes she might make by cruising would perhaps afford to the tender's commander a counterbalancing advantage. Another misfortune, and one more sensibly felt by an enterprising officer, is, that his little skirmishes with enemy's privateers, unless he takes a vessel which the admiral or the captain of the flag-ship wishes to have purchased into the service, or that some relative or protégé of the admiral or captain is on board the tender, are seldom noticed. Desirous as we have been to get at all these cases, we are satisfied that there are many, highly creditable to the parties concerned, of which the public are yet in ignorance.

On the 11th of October, at 7 h. 30 m. a.m., the British 38-gun frigate Révolutionnaire, Captain Thomas Twysden, cruising off the coast of Ireland in a heavy gale from the south-southwest, discovered to leeward and immediately chased a strange ship ; which, at 5 p.m., after a run of 114 miles in the nine

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