That the _Lawrence_ was speedily getting the worst of the fight could be told even by a lad like myself, and I felt a certain sense of satisfaction when Commodore Perry shouted through a speaking trumpet to the craft nearest, which chanced to be the _Niagara_:-- “Pass the word for all hands to make sail and bear down on Barclay. Lay him close alongside at all hazards!” Then, even above the roar of the guns, I heard the order transmitted from one craft to the other, until it seemed that every sailing-master in the fleet must have heard it; but to my surprise the _Niagara_ hauled off slightly, instead of obeying the commands. To my eyes the engagement had ceased to be a battle, but was become a slaughter. On every hand were dead, dying, or wounded men, and four times within twice as many minutes had the crew of our gun been so thinned out that old Silas was forced to call for assistance. Then it was, just at the moment he urged one of the new men who had been sent to assist us, to stand bravely up to his work, that the old man’s hip was shattered by a grape-shot, and he fell like one dead across the breach of the gun. “We must get him into the cockpit,” Alec said to me, speaking as calmly as if this was but an incident which we had been anticipating. “Take him by the head, and move quickly, else he will bleed to death before Dr. Parsons has a chance at him!” Numbed with horror, I obeyed; and as we carried the old hero across the deck a stream of blood marked our way, making such a trail that it seemed as if his veins must have been emptied before we had traversed half the short distance. Once in the ward-room I understood in a single instant what might be the horrors of war, better than I could have done by remaining on deck the full day. The scene in this place, which was separated from the terrible tumult above only by the deck-planking, was more horrible than can be described in mere words. The groans, the prayers of the dying, and the bustling to and fro of the surgeon and his assistants, all combined to make a noise more terrifying than the roar of the guns and the crashing of timbers. The hue of blood everywhere, the cutting of human flesh, or the probing of ghastly wounds, sickened me until never again can I be brought to believe that there is anything noble or grand in warfare. Even as we laid old Silas, now unconscious from loss of blood, upon one of the rough tables whereon were shreds of flesh and fragments of bone, a shot came crashing into the brig’s side, tearing a passage straight through this place of torment, and releasing from their misery two poor fellows who had suffered the tortures of the amputating knife. One of the surgeon’s assistants was wounded by the same shot, but Dr. Parsons gave his attention first to old Silas, and in answer to Alec’s eager question replied:--