Chapter 24

Some shout at victory's loud acclaim,
Some fall that victory to assure,
But time divulges that in name,
Alone, our triumphs are secure.

Duo.

The Briton had come out of the Cove of Cork, only a few days before, and
was bound on service, with orders to run off to the westward, a few
hundred miles, and to cruise three months in a latitude that might cover
the homeward-bound running ships, from the American provinces, of which
there were many in that early period of the war. This was not agreeable
news to us, who had hoped to be landed somewhere immediately, and who had
thought, at first, on seeing the ship carrying a press of sail to the
westward that she might be going to Halifax. There was no remedy, however,
and we were fain to make the best of circumstances. Captain Rowley
promised to put us on board the first vessel that offered, and that was as
much as we had a right, to ask of him.

More than two months passed without the Briton's speaking, or even seeing
a single sail! To these vicissitudes is the seaman subject; at one time he
is in the midst of craft, at another the ocean seems deserted to himself
alone. Captain Rowley ascribed this want of success to the fact that the
war was inducing the running ships to collect in convoys, and that his
orders carried him too far north to permit his falling in with the
Americans, bound to and from Liverpool. Whatever may have been the reason,
however, the result was the same to us. After the gale of the equinox, the
Briton stood to the southward, as far as Madeira, such a change of ground
being included in her instructions; and thence, after cruising three weeks
in the neighbourhood of that island, she shaped her course for Plymouth.
In the whole, the frigate had, at that time, brought-to and boarded some
thirty sail, all of whom were neutrals, and not one of whom was bound to a
port that would do us any good. The ship's water getting low, we were now
compelled to go in, and, as has been said, we made sail to the northward.
The afternoon of the very day the Briton left her second cruising ground,
a strange ship was seen directly on our course, which was pronounced to be
a frigate, before the sun set.

The Briton manoeuvred all night to close with the stranger, and with
success, as he was only a league distant, and a very little to windward of
her, when I went on deck early the next morning. I found the ship clear
for action, and a degree of animation pervading the vessel, that I had
never before witnessed. The people were piped to breakfast just as I
approached the captain to salute him with a 'good morning.'

"Good morning to you, Wallingford," cried the old man, in a cheerful way;
"you are just in time to take a look at