After landing his passenger at Lorient, Captain Allen was ordered to make a cruise in English waters. It was almost impossible for him to send to America any prizes he might make, even if he could weaken his ship to man them; and his instructions, therefore, were to sink, burn, and destroy all he captured. It was a daring enterprise, like the cruises of Paul Jones and Wickes and Conyngham in the older war, though with the increased numbers of the enemy's navy it was presumably attended with greater danger. But strangely enough, with the lesson of the earlier war before them, so little had the British provided for the defence of their own seas against commerce-destroyers, that the "Argus" was able to cruise for two months, often within four leagues of their coast, without being disturbed in her operations. During this time she captured twenty-three prizes, most of which were burned. The value of the ships and cargoes destroyed amounted to near two millions of dollars; and as happened in the Revolution, the rate of marine insurance in England was raised far in advance of its usual figure. The naval administration, which at this period of defeat was roundly abused by English writers, must have been more than usually sluggish, to have allowed a 20-gun brig to continue for two months such depredations. [Illustration: "THE 'PELICAN' WAS GUIDED TO HER BY THE SMOKE OF THE BURNING MERCHANTMAN."] At length the British sloop "Pelican," which had just come in from the West Indies, was sent out from Cork expressly to fight the "Argus." She was a little superior in force, but the difference, as in most of these actions, was not great enough to be of any consequence. The "Argus" was now destroying prizes right and left, and the "Pelican" was guided to her by the smoke of the burning merchantmen. When the English sloop first sighted her in the evening, she was busy with a prize; and though the "Pelican" lost her in the night, another fire disclosed her position in the morning.