“The next day we perceived the Felicité warping nearer to us, so we prepared for our departure, as the fort would be demolished in a few hours. Leaving the British colours flying, after discharging our three cannons—the only guns fit for service—at the frigate, we embarked in two six-paddled canoes, Captain Stanhope, his two sons, myself, and six soldiers in one, and Lieutenant Markham, a sergeant, and eight men in the other. As we pulled up the river with the flood-tide, we heard a tremendous fire opened upon the old crumbling walls of the fort, and then suddenly cease. ‘Ah!’ said Captain Stanhope, ‘they have found out that the birds are gone.’ We pulled on till the tide turned, and anchored for the night in a little creek, erected two tents we had brought with us, and made ourselves comfortable till the turn of the tide. “‘This would be a bad adventure a month later,’ said Captain Stanhope as we rested, the Captain and Lieutenant smoking their pipes. I had not imbibed that taste, so sat enjoying a bottle of good wine, and thinking of Cherry Packenham. I asked, ‘Why?’ ‘Because,’ said the Captain, ‘some of us would be sure to catch the fever, for where we are going the country is scarcely cleared, and the jungles are pestiferous.’ “‘How far up have our friends gone?’ I demanded. “‘Perhaps not more than two or three leagues; there is a deserted village, and plenty of huts which will afford shelter till those infernal Frenchmen take themselves off. I am sure, having no chance of plunder, they will be away from this coast in a few days. We shall then return to the town, and repair the damage.’ “The next morning early we took down our tents, packed up, and started with the first of the flood. This was a suffocatingly hot day, the river on both sides covered with an impenetrable jungle. About three o’clock we came in sight of the clearance, where the huts were; we saw the canoes all at anchor before the place, and numbers of the inhabitants crowding down to the river’s bank. ‘There is something wrong,’ said Captain Stanhope, and we paddled rapidly up. I felt, even then, I could not say why, unaccountably uneasy. As soon as we reached the banks, several persons met us, all eager to speak. “‘What’s the matter? what’s the matter?’ said Captain Stanhope. “‘We have bad news to tell you, Captain,’ said a gentleman of the name of Creigh, an Irish settler—‘John Sinclair carried off, in the night, Colonel Packenham’s two daughters, and the two negro girls.’ “‘Good God!’ I exclaimed, jumping ashore in an agony of mind indescribable. ‘Has no one pursued them? Which way did they go? Who helped this villain to commit such an outrage?’