The arrival of Admiral Rodney at St. Lucia, was the occasion of great joy in the fleet, which had been penned up there for many months, and the French in turn were blockaded in the Island of Martinique, and could not join the Spanish fleet in Hispaniola. While Rodney was watching the French and Spanish fleets, the Tobago, on which our friend Clark had been forced by a press-gang, was ordered to Jamaica with despatches in all possible haste. On this voyage Clark narrates an incident deserving a place in this little work. “We had a venerable man on board our ship for chief gunner, who, from some unknown cause, had taken a dislike to me, and never gave me a kind word. One beautiful, moonlight night, while sailing near Hispaniola, it was my turn at the helm, and I was astonished at the unexpected behavior of the gunner to me. He approached me with as much respect as if I had been his superior in rank or station. Had he been an intemperate man, I should have accounted for his conduct, as some men are remarkably good natured while under the influence of liquor, and others are very cross and surly. But he was a moral man and never became intoxicated. He appeared in his conversation like a person who had done with this world, and in kind and respectful language gave me a sketch of his life. He had been in the British navy forty years; but the subject on which he dwelt with the most feeling was the bursting of cannon in action; and expressed with an emphatic tone of voice, he had never known a gun “expended”[7] but that a gunner was expended with it. Next day after dinner as we were sailing near the same Island, an armed brig popped out from the Island and gave us a chase. Our business required haste, and we could not stay merely to fight, and we endeavored to decoy her near by housing our guns. Suspecting our manœuvres, she fired two guns, and altered her course. We, in turn, intended to fire a broadside soon as we could bring our guns to bear. But, alas! the sixth gun we fired burst, and mortally wounded three men, and maimed several others for life. Our venerable gunner had one foot entirely cut off, and the other hung by his leg. The surgeon told him, he could not survive, and he called for his mate, and told him to adjust his temporal affairs with the Board of Admiralty, and with great composure of mind, and in hope of mercy, he yielded up his spirit.”