Under the charge of her acting commander, the “Antelope” was off Cumberland Harbour, in Jamaica, homeward bound, when she fell in with two schooners which at once gave chase. This was on the 1st December. Mr. Curtis put the ship to her best point of sailing, and she behaved so well that throughout the day the Cornishmen felt no doubt of being able to shake off their enemies. On the following morning one of the schooners was out of sight, but the other held on, and about four P.M. opened fire with her bow chasers. The “Antelope” replied smartly with all the guns she could bring to bear; and the Privateer, finding there was to be no bloodless victory, dropped astern, with the evident design of waiting for daylight before she commenced the action. Fearing a surprise, Mr. Curtis kept his men at their quarters throughout the night. The hours of waiting must have been trying to the nerve of the Falmouth men; but all was quiet until five A.M. At that hour the Privateer (her name was the “Atalanta”) suddenly ran down, aided by her sweeps, for the wind had dropped, and, laying herself alongside the “Antelope” to starboard, she poured in a broadside, which was promptly returned, and immediately a furious discharge of cannon and small arms set in on both sides. Under cover of the smoke the “Atalanta” cast out grappling irons and locked herself to the Packet, and at the same moment, by a shrill signal, her boarders were called to their stations. Mr. Curtis was perfectly alive to the danger of his position. Some of his hands having been disabled by fever, he had but twenty-two men fit for service, counting the surgeon as a combatant; and a single glance was sufficient to show that the French were in much greater numbers. There was no chance of avoiding the assault, now that the grappling irons were securely fixed: yet, if the Privateersmen made good their footing on the deck of the Packet, the Cornishmen were tolerably certain to be overwhelmed by numbers. At the moment when Mr. Curtis was watching the boarders congregating on the quarter, it was reported to him that a second party was forming at the bow. The Packetsmen were all too few to resist a single attack, and the design of the enemy clearly was to keep the whole force occupied at the stern, while a second party clambered over the bow nettings unresisted, and took the Cornishmen in the rear. Mr. Curtis hurried forward. There was not an instant to lose. The boarders were already mounting the bulwarks of their own ship. Some fifteen in number, they crowded together in a dense body, and in another instant would have leapt at the “Antelope,” when Mr. Curtis brought his two bow guns to bear upon them, double-shotted with round and grape. At that short range the discharge of these guns created terrible havoc, and killed or disabled the whole of the opposing party.