Nine prizes of little value were taken. They cruised eastward to Longitude 22 degrees west and southward to 17 degrees north latitude. They re-entered Boston on the last month of the year, 1812. It is no fault of Rodgers that he did not meet an armed ship at sea, and win glory like that gained by Hull, Bainbridge and Decatur. For Perry, fortune was yet reserving her favor and Providence a noble work. Leaving Boston, April 30, the _President_ crossed the Atlantic to the Azores, and thence moved up toward North Cape. In these icy seas, Rodgers hoped to intercept a fleet of thirty merchant vessels sailing from Archangel, July 15. Escaping after being chased eighty-four hours by a British frigate and a seventy-four, Rodgers returned from his Arctic adventures, and after a five months’ cruise cast anchor at Newport, September 27. Twelve vessels, with two hundred and seventy-one prisoners, had been taken; and the ships he disposed of by cartel, ransom, sinking, or despatch to France or the United States as prizes. No less than twenty British men-of-war, sailing in couples for safety, scoured the seas for half a year, searching in vain for the saucy Yankee. Three years of service, under his own eye, had so impressed Commodore Rodgers with his midshipman, that, on the 3d of February, 1813, he wrote to the Department asking that Perry be promoted. This was granted February 27, and, at eighteen, Matthew Perry became an acting lieutenant. “Heroes are made early.” Four of the Perry brothers served their country in the navy in 1813; two in the _Lawrence_ on Lake Erie, and two on the _President_ at sea. An item of news that concerned them all, and brought them to her bedside, was their mother’s illness. This, fortunately, was not of long duration. At home, Matthew Perry found his commission as lieutenant, dated July 24. Of the forty-four promotions, made on that date, he ranked number fourteen. Requesting a change to another ship, he was ordered to the _United States_, under Commodore Decatur. Chased into the harbor of New London, by a British squadron, this frigate, with the _Wasp_ and _Macedonian_, was kept in the Thames until the end of the war. Perry’s five months’ service on board of her was one of galling inaction. Left inactive in the affairs of war, the young lieutenant improved his time in affairs of the heart; and on Christmas eve, 1814, was married to Miss Jane Slidell, then but seventeen years of age. The Reverend, afterwards Bishop, Nathaniel Bowen, united the pair according to the ritual of the Episcopal church, at the house of the bride’s father, a wealthy New York merchant. Perry’s brothers-in-law, John Slidell, Alexander Slidell (MacKenzie), and their neighbor and playmate, Charles Wilkes, as well as himself, were afterwards heard from.