mark me, messmates, she was moored head and starn betwixt two heavy batteries, the smallest of which could have blowed the little frigate out of the water, and cut her up like junk. “It was a beautiful evening, when the saucy Surprise stood close in to reckoniter;--there was a fine breeze and smooth water, and the craft worked like a top. They could see the sodgers at the batteries and the men on board the enemy all at their quarters, and the gun-boats were pulling out to take up convenient positions; though there warn’t a man among ’em believed the ship could be taken, yet they knew damned well the Englishmen would try. “Well, next day Captain Hamilton hove-to, just without range of shot, and challenged the Harmoine to come out; but she took no notice of it, and so the Surprise made sail, stood into the mouth of the harbour, and fired at her. The batteries opened their palaver; but the little ship hauled off without a shot touching her, and the lazy lubberly Spaniards, more than two to one in men and metal, didn’t dare to show their yellow rag outside the port. So the ship’s company, fore-and-aft, wondered what the captain would be at, and they grinned like so many cat-heads to think they couldn’t get a fair slap at her. But the captain was up in the main-top with a round jacket on,--stretched out at full length with his glass resting on the top-brim, and most earnestly overhauling their consarns in-shore, so that an old woman couldn’t stir out of doors, nor a rat move on the Harmoine’s decks without his seeing it. The master was up in the fore-top upon the same lay, and they kept hailing each other about different consarns till they made every thing out as plain as the grog-blossoms on Darby’s nose there. [The individual alluded to gave a chuckle something between a grunt and a laugh, and applied his fingers to an enormous red proboscis, that certainly seemed the tell-tale of a besetting sin.] Well, d’ye mind, they kept at this all day long, dodging about and in-and-out, like a dog in a fair, till the men got quite tantalized and jaundiced at seeing so much of the yellow bunting,--for the enemy had hoisted it every where out of bravado.