An old lady, a person of some distinction, a passenger in the commodore's ship, was picked up, floating about on a bale of cotton; she did not know how she had got there. The commodore was also rescued, and Walker gave them the use of his cabin, and fitted out the old lady with "a silk nightgown, some fine linen waistcoats, cambric night-caps, etc., in which she appeared a kind of hermaphrodite in dress"; a droll figure, indeed! But a privateer skipper can scarcely be expected to be provided with requisites for such an occasion. The poor old lady had a tragic tale to tell, for her daughter, a young girl, went down with the ship; and her account of the scene between decks, where she and her daughter retired during the action, is ghastly enough: "Hither they brought the poor bleeding sailors, one after another, without legs, without arms, roaring with their pains, and laid in heaps to be butchered anew by the surgeon, in his haste and despatch of cure or death. Here several of the objects died at our feet. Thus surrounded by the ghastly prospect, all at once death himself came breaking in upon us, through the side of the ship; cut down the surgeon and one of his mates, and shattered the whole medicine-chest in pieces. Here was a total suspension of all relief to the poor wounded wretches; death coming, as it were, to reinforce his own orders and stop every means or effort to prevent him." Arrived with his shattered vessel and equally dismantled prizes at King's Road, Bristol, Walker, reporting proceedings to the Admiralty, received a handsome congratulatory letter from the Secretary. Sailing once more in July, Walker captured in August a vessel, the _Catharina_, which he subsequently bought as a tender, naming her the _George_; and in the following month he found himself, as was so often the case in privateers, at loggerheads with his crew over a vessel--a Dutchman--which he overhauled, and, being satisfied that her cargo was not contraband, dismissed her. The crew, after grumbling among themselves, assembled on deck while Walker was at supper, demanding to see him.