After dropping the fishing-schooner we steered away to the East, and were lucky enough the next morning to make prize of another British vessel, a bark of about four hundred tons, and containing a valuable cargo of military and naval stores. She was a chartered transport; that is, she was a private craft, employed by the British authorities for conveying government property, and she carried ten or twelve passengers, all of them officers in his Majesty's service, or their families. I treated these passengers in the same way I did those of the Camperdown, allowing them to remain on board on condition of giving their parole not to countenance any movement for the recapture of the vessel. The crew was transferred to the Marguerite, and when the prize-crew under my first mate went on board the stranger, I found myself without a commissioned officer on board, and decidedly short-handed. So I decided to accompany the prize to New York, and give up looking for any more of the enemy's ships; if anything fell in my way I would attend to it, but as for continuing on the aggressive, and going farther from port, I was in no condition to do so. It was arranged that the two vessels were to keep close together, unless separated by bad weather, in which case the prize would steer as straight as possible for port, and I would do likewise. All went well with us until we sighted the coast of Long Island, forty or fifty miles from New York. We had seen several sail, but too far away to make them out distinctly; they had not sought to make our acquaintance, and we had avoided theirs, as there would have been a loss of time in trying to speak to them, and the chances were that they would be of our own nationality, and therefore valueless as prizes. Soon after we sighted the coast, which lay like a low cloud on the horizon, a large vessel loomed up ahead of us. I scanned her anxiously, as there was a strong possibility that she was something I didn't want to meet just then. She might be American, and she might be British; the possibilities were that she was British, as there was a British man-of-war on the coast at the time war was declared, and she was large enough to carry not fewer than forty guns. Very plainly, she would make short work of the Marguerite if we ventured within her reach. The strange ship was right on the track we wished to follow, and under shortened sail, as though waiting for us. I signaled my prize that I wanted to speak her. We drew closer together, at the same time holding to our course, but ready to change as soon as we should find that the stranger was a British man-of-war.