She gave me a warning of what she might do by getting me into several predicaments from which it was little less than a miracle that the Marguerite escaped capture. Great numbers of British war-ships were hovering on our coast and swarming on the ocean; and on half a dozen and more occasions it was only the superior sailing qualities of the schooner, or some tact of my own, that saved her. Once we were surrounded by a fleet of five British war-ships; the wind had fallen almost to a calm, and capture seemed inevitable. The nearest of the enemy's vessels had got out their boats to carry us by boarding, and I was about to order our flag lowered to avoid helpless bloodshed, when suddenly I saw in the distance the waters rippled by a breeze, and a dark cloud which betokened a squall. CHAPTER XIX. ESCAPING FROM A BRITISH FLEET.--DESTRUCTION OF THE MARGUERITE.--CAPTURED BY AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.--PRISONER AT PLYMOUTH AND DARTMOOR. I thought of the escape of the Constitution under similar circumstances, and prepared accordingly. The British ships shortened sail to avoid the peril of capsizing; I kept everything spread, and when the squall struck us we heeled over so that our lee guns were buried. For a moment I thought we would go over on our beam-ends; then the Marguerite stiffened up, and darted ahead like a race-horse, and away we sped through the water. On we dashed between two of the ships that had closed in upon us, and, though the shot flew thick, we were not touched by a single one of them. Before the enemy could gather way to follow us, we were out of reach of harm, and we stayed out of it too. My experience in this affair calls to mind that of the privateer Saratoga, Captain Riker. She carried eighteen guns and a crew of one hundred and forty men. In the autumn of 1812 she captured the ship Quebec, sixteen guns, from Jamaica, with a cargo worth three hundred thousand dollars. She went into the port of La Guayra, Venezuela, but was warned off, as some British ships were cruising in the neighborhood, and the authorities did not want any battle in the harbor. A fog came on, and as she was going out of the bay she captured a British vessel worth twenty thousand dollars. The fog lasted all day and into the next; and just as it cleared off she fell in with a twelve-gun brig, that she captured. Then she ran into the jaws of two British men-of-war. They supposed she would steer so as to avoid both of them at the same time, and under that supposition they separated. The Saratoga watched her chance, suddenly going about, and steering straight between them. They could not turn as quickly as she could, and before they went about she was practically out of danger; the shot flew thick about her, but did no serious damage. In June of that year (1814) I sailed on what I intended should be my last cruise; and it proved to be the last, though it ended quite differently from what I had planned. Robert Burns tells us in his ode "To a Mouse," that