As soon as the pirate had become disentangled from our vessel, our captors having placed combustibles in three places on board of the _Jacob Bell_, she was fired about four o’clock, when she was abandoned, and we steamed away from her neighborhood. The distressing circumstances under which we were placed rendered it impossible for us to feel the sublimity of the spectacle she presented while the flames crept steadily up her sails, spars, and rigging, until she became a pyramid of fire. Not that our thoughts dwelt so much upon the wicked destruction of property, as upon the fact that we were being completely cut off from home and country; and knew not how, when, nor where we could look for release. To us the last sight of our noble ship a little before her masts fell, when with her sails and rigging all a-blaze, she was quietly floating on, impressed us with a scene of awful and melancholy grandeur. The sublimity of such a spectacle depends altogether upon the circumstances under which we behold it. Our ideas of things are merely relative, and depend for their moral effect upon the power of association. Hence, the contemplation of any wide-spread ruin may be the height of the sublime to a disinterested spectator; but to another, whose worldly interests, or, as was feared in this instance, whose life is depending upon the character and extent of the calamity, it can be nothing else than a scene of horror and dismay. The next day (Saturday, the 14th) we had a fair wind, and the steamer, having only enough coals for two days’ use, was put under sail, and her screw raised upon deck. The armament of the pirate was very heavy: there being six sixty-eight pounders, three on each side of the ship; and two immense guns, called chasers, one at the bow and the other at the stern, which were said to be one hundred and twenty pounders. There were about[45] one hundred and sixty men on board beside the officers, the latter consisting of the captain, a sailing-master, four lieutenants, four midshipmen, and two physicians, besides three or four minor officers. The small arms of the _Jacob Bell_ which were taken enabled some of the crew to supply themselves with fine cutlasses, and thus complete their accoutrements. The lieutenants and physicians were very young men, none being over twenty-five years old; and the midshipmen were quite young striplings,--mere boys in fact,--but some of them hard-looking youngsters. Both the lieutenants and midshipmen were evidently regarded as belonging to the class called “Southern gentlemen!” There was a Reed from Charleston, and a Floyd from Georgia,--(of the former I shall say more by and by,)--both of the best blood of the South, and the rest of the officers were also reputed to be of highly respectable lineage. One officer--a young man from Mobile, whose name I have forgotten--became so intoxicated, on some brandy we had among our stores, that he was put under arrest, which was the only