mmander," responded Perry; "and my shot was intended to warn you
that you had received no such permission."

By this time the British vessel had come within hailing distance of
the "Gen. Greene;" and the captain demanded why his boat had been
fired upon, and was now detained. Perry responded in the same words
with which he had answered the boarding-officer.

"It's a most surprising thing," shouted the Englishman, losing his
temper, "if a British seventy-four-gun ship cannot search a pitiful
little Yankee merchantman."

"By Heaven!" responded Perry. "If you were a ship of the first rate,
you should not do it, to the dishonor of my flag." And in an instant
the ports of the "Gen. Greene" were triced up, and the British captain
saw that his adversary was prepared for battle. After a moment's
thought, he abandoned all attempts at violence, and sent a courteous
letter to Perry, begging leave to visit the brig in search of British
deserters, which request Perry as courteously granted.

To this list of American seamen who suffered indignities at the hands
of the British, and afterwards won reparation from their enemies in
the War of 1812, may be added the name of Joshua Barney. Few Americans
have given to their country a longer service or more efficient aid
than he. In the little Colonial navy of the Revolution, he held high
rank, and won the plaudits of older sailors. At the close of the
Revolution, he served for a time in the merchant-marine; then entered
the naval service of France, and, at the first news of war between
England and America, returned to his country, to enlist under the
stars and stripes. It was while he was in command of a merchantman
that he was brought into collision with the British in a way that well
might make the doughty old sea-dog doubt if the Revolutionary days,
when he suffered in the noisome confines of Mill Prison, had not come
again.

It was in the summer of 1793, that the good ship "Sampson," two days
out from Cape Francois, West Indies, was slowly making her way
northward, over the tropic seas, and under the glaring rays of the
summer sun of the torrid zone. Capt. Barney and his crew were ever on
the watch for danger; for, in addition to the hurricanes and typhoons
common to the equatorial latitudes, much was to be feared from the
lawless British privateers that then swarmed in the West Indies and
Bermudas. That the "Sampson" was under the flag of a neutral power,
was but little protectio