This is a chapter of small-boat fights, and it is of particular interest to Americans because of the great courage and good fighting ability usually displayed by the Yankee crews. The little schooner _Alligator_ was one that made a good name. Under Sailing-master Bassett, when lying at Cole’s Island, near Charleston, she was attacked at night by six boats loaded with small cannon and seamen. She had but forty men on board, but after a half hour’s fight they drove away the enemy. The British did not report their loss, but one may get an idea of their disorder when they fled, from the fact that one of the attacking cutters was found aground on North Edisto next day, badly cut up, and with the bodies of an officer and a common seaman lying dead nearby. The others had been too much demoralized to care for the wounded, and these two, after the boat drifted ashore, had left it, vainly seeking help, and had died together. Last of all will be told the story of Sailing-master Lawrence Kearny’s attack on the men of the British frigate _Hebrus_, near Charleston. The _Hebrus_ had sent a lot of men and boats ashore for water, and they had landed out of gunshot from their frigate. So Kearny, with three barges, went after the water-party. The Americans were seen afloat from the _Hebrus_, and signals were at once set and guns fired to recall the water-party. Two boats of that party got outside clear, but a shift of wind enabled the Americans to get between the frigate and a large tender that had been of the water-party. At that the _Hebrus_ opened fire on the American barges and signalled her two water-boats to return to the aid of the tender. And when her water-boats failed to obey these signals she opened fire on them as well. So near was the frigate at this time that a shot took off the head of a man sitting beside Kearny, but he held fast on his course and captured the tender (a schooner, armed with a carronade and six brass swivels), the big launch of the _Hebrus_ and forty men, all of which were carried off from under the guns of the enraged Englishman. Nor was that all, for a few days later Kearny manned the captured launch with twenty-five men, and rowing out alongside the tender (a schooner) of the British ship _Severn_, he boarded her in spite of the resistance of her crew of more than thirty men, and succeeded in taking her and her crew into port also. “Handsomer exploits of the sort were not performed in the war.” And the story of the gun-boats is not completed, as will appear in the account of the Navy’s part in the battle of New Orleans. END OF VOL. II. APPENDIX TO VOLUME II PRIZE MONEY AND PAY IN 1812. The act of April 22, 1800, provided for the distribution of prize money in the sections given below, and it was under this law that the crews of the American ships were paid in the War of 1812. _Sec. 6. And be it enacted_, That the prize money, belonging to the officers and men, shall be distributed in the following manner: