it, and just begins to breathe free, three boats full of lobsters, of red-coats, shoots right across, and closes the entrance effectually on that side. We was in a regular rat-trap. We had been seen and watched from the moment we had got inside of the bay, burning the raft and all. ‘Well, my lads,’ says the Lieutenant, ‘this will never do—we must go about—hug the shore close, and try to push by the barges.’ So about we went, but as we neared the shore, there was a party of them ’ere riflemen in their leggins and hunting-shirts, all ready for us, waiting just as cool and unconsarned as if we was a parcel of Christmas turkies, put up for them to shoot at. ‘Umph,’ says the Lieutenant again, ‘’twon’t do for them fellers to be cracking their coach-whips at us neither—we’ve nothing to do for it, my boys, but to try our luck, such as it is, with the barges.’ So as we pulled dead for the entrance of the bay, they lay on their oars, all ready for us, and as we came up, they poured such a deadly fire into that ere yawl as I never seed before or since. There was nineteen wounds among eight of us. The Lieutenant was the only one unhurt, though his hat was riddled through and through, and his clothes hung about him in tatters. How he was presarved, is a miracle, for he was standing all the while in the starn-sheets, the most exposed of any on board. They kept firing away, as if they intended to finish the business, and gin no quarter, the men doing what little they could to pull at the oars; but a boat of wounded and dying men couldn’t make much headway. Our men was true Yankee lads, tho’—and no flinching. “There was one man named Patterson, as pulled on the same thwart with me, and of all the men I’ve ever sailed with, he showed most of what I calls real grit. At their first volley, he gets a shot through his thigh, shattering the bone so that it hung twisted over on one side, but he pulls away at his oar as if nothing had happened. Presently another passes through his lungs, and comes out at his back—still he pulls away, and didn’t give in;—at last, a third takes him through the throat, and passes out back of his neck;—then, and not till then, did he call out to the lieutenant—‘Mr. G—, I’m killed, sir;—I’m dead;—I can’t do no more.’ So the lieutenant says—‘Throw your oar overboard, Patterson, and slide down into the bottom of the boat, and make yourself as comfortable as you can.’ Well—what does Patterson do, as he lays in the bottom of the boat bleeding to death, what does he do but lifts his arm over the gunwale, and shaking his fist, cry, ‘Come on, damn ye, one at a time, and I’m enough for ye as I am.’ Aye, aye, Patterson was what I calls real grit. He was a good, quiet, steady man, too, on board ship; always clean and ac_tyv_e, and cheerful in obeying orders. Howsomever, his time had come, and in course there was an end of his boat duty in this world.