“Well—they continued to fire into us as fast as they could load, cause why, they was aggravated that so small a force should have fired into them; but the lieutenant takes off his hat and makes a low bow, to let them know as how he had surrendered, and then directs me to hold up an oar’s blade; but they takes no notice of neither, and still peppered away; but just as we concludes that they didn’t intend to give no quarter, but meant to extarminate us outright, they slacks firing, and, taking a long circuit, as if we’d have been a torpedo, or some other dangerous combustible, pulled up aboard. There wasn’t much for them to be afeard on though, for with the exception of the lieutenant, who was untouched, there was nothing in the boat but dead and wounded men. They took us in tow, and carried us down to Kingston, and mighty savage was Sir James;—he said that it was unpardonable that so small a force should have attempted resistance, and he and the lieutenant getting high, and becoming aggravated by something as was said between them, Sir James claps him in a state-room under arrest, and keeps him there under a sentry, with a drawn baggonet, for nigh on two months. After that he sends the lieutenant to Quebec, and then to England, where he remained till the close of the war; but them of us men as didn’t die of our wounds was kept down in Montreal, until——” Here the old man broke off abruptly, and taking another long look at the horizon, said, “If I a’nt much mistaken, Master Tom, there’s something a-brewing ahead there, as will make this here craft wake up, as if she was at the little end of a funnel, with a harricane pouring through the other—and if I knows the smell of a Potomac thundergust, we’ll have it full blast here before we’re many minutes older.” [1] Frigate Constitution. [2] Frigate United States. LEE’S PARTISAN LEGION. Old Kennedy quietly proceeded to make the necessary preparations to encounter the tempest. His peacoat was got out of the locker, and tightly buttoned about him, and his tarpaulin well secured by its lanyard to his button-hole. The mainsail and foresail were stowed and secured, and nothing but the jib, the bonnet of which was reefed down, was allowed to remain spread upon our dark and graceful schooner. The cloud in the horizon began to extend itself, increasing and gradually rising and covering the sky, and the old man’s prediction was evidently about to be fulfilled. A dead calm lay upon the river, and a preternatural stillness clothed in a sort of stupor the whole face of nature around us; while low muttering rolls of thunder from the dark cloud, and the frequent, sudden, crinkling lightning, glittering across its surface, warned us that we were about to encounter one of those violent and terrible thunder-storms which not unfrequently occur in this part of the country.