West India Islands. Everybody immediately concluded the vessel in view
to be one of them. If this conjecture should turn out true, there would
be no easy task before us, seeing how much we had crippled ourselves, by
sending away, in the boats, so many officers and men.

It now became a matter of earnest deliberation, to which of the two
ships we should first turn our attention, as the probabilities were
great against our capturing both. The _Prince William_, the captured
West Indiaman, I have before said, was the largest and finest ship of
the convoy. Indeed, she was nearly as large as ourselves, mounted
sixteen guns, and we had made her a repeating ship, and employed her
continually in whipping-in the bad sailers.

The chase after her promised to be as as long as would have been the
chase after the Frenchman.

Mr Farmer, who was all for fighting, and getting his next step of
promotion, was for nearing the West Indiaman a little more, sending the
cutter to take possession, and then do our best to capture the frigate.
Now, the cutter pulled eight oars, there were two good-looking jollies,
with their muskets between their knees, stuck up in the bows, six in the
stern-sheets, Mr Pridhomme, the enamoured master's mate, and the Irish
young gentleman, who had seen as much service and as many years as
myself; with the coxswain, who was steering. Mr Farmer, of course,
measured everybody's courage by his own; but I think it was taxing
British intrepidity a little too much, to expect that nineteen persons,
in broad daylight, should chase in an open boat, and which must
necessarily pull up a long stern-pull of perhaps two or three hours,
exposed to the fire of those on board, and then afterwards, supposing
that nobody had been either killed or wounded by the ball practice that
would have been certainly lavished on the attacking party, to get
alongside, and climb up the lofty side of a vessel, as high out of the
water as a fifty-gun ship. We say nothing of the guns that might have
been loaded by the captors with grape, and the number of men that would
infallibly be placed to defend and to navigate so noble a vessel.

Captain Reud weighed all this, and decided upon making with the frigate,
the recapture first, and then trusting to Providence for the other: for
which decision, which I thought most sound, he got black looks from the
first-lieutenant and some of the officers, and certain hints were
whispered of _dark_ birds s