the gunner hadn’t have jumped on it with his feet, before it caught the loose powder—my eyes! but that ere ship and every thing on board would have gone into the air like a sheaf of sky-rockets, and them as was on board, never would have know’d which side whipped. Out of one hundred men that went into action, eighty-three were either killed or wounded, and every officer was killed or hurt except the Commodore. Our Lieutenant of marines, lieutenant Brooks—him as was called the Boston Apollo—the handsomest man in the sarvice, was cut nearly in two by a cannon shot, and died before the close of the action. “It was nigh on all up with us. The men was real grit though, and even the wounded, cried, ‘Blow her up,’ rather than strike. Well, as things stood, there was an end of the Lawrence, so far as fighting went,—and our Commodore says, says he,—‘Lieutenant Yarnall, the American flag must not be pulled down over my head this day, while life remains in my body: I will go on board that ship and bring her myself into action—and I will leave it to you to pull down the Lawrence’s flag, if there is no help for it.’ So we got our barge alongside, by the blessing of Heaven, not so much injured but what she’d float, and off we pushed for the Niagara—the Commodore standing with his motto flag under his arm; but as soon as the enemy caught sight of us, they delivered a whole broadside directly at the boat—and then peppered away so briskly, that the water all around us bubbled like a duck-pond in a thunder shower. There Perry stood, erect and proud, in the starn sheets—his pistols strapped in his belt, and his sword in his hand—his eyes bent upon the Niagara,—as if he’d jump the distance,—never heeding the shot flying around him like hail. The men begged him to sit down—they entreated him with tears in their eyes—but it was not until I dragged him down by main force,—the men declaring that they would lay upon their oars and be taken—that he consented.