I could scarcely contain my laughter, although by this time rockets were rising into the air on our three sides, with a rapidity which showed that we had got somewhere into the midst of the channel fleet, and that the frigate astern was telegraphing to her consorts of our whereabouts. Our situation was alarming in the extreme. Beset on all sides, we had scarcely the slightest chance of escape, our only hope, in fact, consisting in the darkness of the night, and the ignorance of our position on the part of the men-of-war ahead. For a moment—and it was the only one of the kind in his life—our skipper seemed to be at fault; and he stood near the starboard railing, with his teeth firmly clenched and his brow contracted, gazing vacantly ahead. Suddenly, however, he turned to the man at the wheel, and ordered him to bear up towards the sail on our weather bow. He then sent down into his cabin for a catalogue of the English navy, which we had taken in a prize but a few days before. Meanwhile the frigate astern had vanished in the gathering gloom, while the man-of-war on our lee-bow was yet unseen. The enemy, however, off our weather cat-head, began to loom faint and shadowy through the fog, and just as he became distinctly defined against the horizon, we heard the roll of the drum beating to quarters, and directly beheld in our foe a heavy frigate, with her ports open and lighted, and a formidable battery frowning across the gloom. We had by this time edged away so as to bring the Englishman a point or two on our lee-bow, and now, running up the British ensign, we bore boldly towards the foe. Every one saw that a _ruse_ was intended, though in what manner it was to be executed we were yet in doubt, and more than one of us trembled for the event. A few moments of breathless suspense brought us up to the Englishman, and as we passed on opposite tacks, and looked up at his enormous hull, and his vast batteries overshadowing us, even the stoutest heart felt a momentary flutter. The captain of the frigate stood in the mizzen rigging, looking down on our little craft, while our own skipper, with hat off, gazed up at his enemy from the quarter-deck larboard gun. It was luckily too dark to see our uniforms from the frigate’s deck. “What craft is that?” thundered the English captain. “The Alert, of his Britannic Majesty’s navy—Captain Sasheby,” answered the skipper. “What frigate have we had the honor of telegraphing?” “The Achilles—Captain Norton. Come to under our lee. You were in chase; at least so we understood the lights. What has become of the enemy?—he was the same one, we suppose, who fired the vessel whose light we saw up to windward.” “Ay! the scoundrel was the Yankee schooner, whom the admiralty has sent us down specially to overhaul. We lost her in the fog, but thought she had gone down towards you.”