“We were staggering along under light canvas, when the lookout-a-head announced a light on the weather-bow; it was evidently coming towards us, and scarce half a mile distant; we had no more than time to hang out a lantern in the tops and put up the helm, when a large ship, whose sides rose several feet above our own, swept by us, and so close, that her yard-arms actually touched our rigging as she yawed over in the sea. A muttered thanksgiving for our escape, for such it was, broke from every lip; and hardly was it uttered, when again a voice cried out, ‘here she comes to leeward,’ and sure enough the dark shadow of the large mass moving at a speed far greater than ours, passed under our lee, while a harsh summons was shouted out to know who we were, and whither bound. ‘The Northumberland,’ with troops, was the answer; and before the words were well out, a banging noise was heard--the ports of the stranger ship were flung open, a bright flash, like a line of flame, ran her entire length, and a raking broadside was poured into us. The old transport reeled over and trembled like a thing of life,--her shattered sides and torn bulwarks let in the water as she heeled to the shock, and for an instant, as she bent beneath the storm, I thought she was settling, to go down by the head. I had little time, however, for thought: one wild cheer broke from the attacking ship--its answer was the faint, sad cry, of the wounded and dying on our deck. The next moment the grapples were thrown into us, and the vessel was boarded from stem to stern. The noise of the cannonade, and the voices on deck, brought all our men from below, who came tumbling up the hatches, believing we had struck. “Then began a scene, such as all I have ever witnessed of carnage and slaughter cannot equal. The Frenchmen, for such they were, rushed down upon us as we stood defenceless, and unarmed; a deadly roll of musketry swept our thick and trembling masses. The cutlass and the boarding-pike made fearful havoc among us, and an unresisted slaughter tore along our deck, till the heaps of dead and dying made the only barrier for the few remaining. “A chance word in French, and a sign of masonry, rescued me from the fate of my comrades, and my only injury was a slight sabre-wound in the fore-arm, which I received in warding off a cut intended for my head. The carnage lasted scarce fifteen minutes; but in that time, of all the crew that manned our craft--what between those who leaped overboard in wild despair, and those who fell beneath fire and steel--scarce twenty remained, appalled and trembling, the only ones rescued from this horrible slaughter. “A sudden cry of ‘she’s sinking!’ burst from the strange ship, and in a moment the Frenchmen clambered up their bulwarks, the grapples were cast off, the dark mass darted onwards on her course, and we, drifted away to leeward--a moving sepulchre!