oon on the body of her husband,
dabbling her clothes and hair in the gore which floated on the
cabin-deck. This scene of misery shocked even the actors in it. Our
sailors, accustomed as they were to blood and rapine, remained silent
and immoveable, resting upon their weapons, their eyes fixed upon the
unconscious form of that unhappy lady.

The rage of battle was now over, our passions had subsided, and we felt
ashamed of a conquest purchased with such unutterable anguish. The
noise of this renewed combat had brought down the captain; he ordered
the lady to be taken away from this scene of horror, and to be carefully
tended in his own cabin; the wound of the son, who was found still
alive, was immediately dressed, and the prisoners were secured. I
returned on deck, still oppressed with the scene I had witnessed, and
when I looked round me, and beheld the deck strewed with the dead and
dying--victors and vanquished indiscriminately mixed up together--the
blood of both nations meeting on the deck and joining their streams, I
could not help putting the question to myself, "Can this be right and
lawful--all this carnage to obtain the property of others, and made
legal by the quarrels of kings?" Reason, religion, and humanity
answered, "No."

I remained uneasy and dissatisfied, and felt as if I were a murderer;
and then I reflected how this property, thus wrested from its former
possessor, who might, if he had retained it, have done much good with
it, would now be squandered away in riot and dissipation, in purchasing
crime and administering to debauchery. I was young then, and felt so
disgusted and so angry with myself and everybody else, that if I had
been in England I probably should never again have put my foot on board
of a privateer.

But employment prevented my thinking; the decks had to be cleaned, the
bodies thrown overboard, the blood washed from the white planks, the
wounded to be removed and their hurts dressed, the rigging and other
damages to be repaired, and when all this had been done we made sail for
Jamaica with our prize. Our captain, who was as kind and gentle to the
vanquished as he was brave and resolute in action, endeavoured by all
the means he could think of to soften the captivity and sufferings of
the lady. Her clothes, jewels, and everything belonging to her, were
preserved untouched; he would not even allow her trunks to be searched,
and would have secured for her even all her husband'