o haul out of the line at once, and
silently, under penalty of being fired into. The defenceless ship
complied, and was at once taken possession of, and the soldiers on
board were transferred to the "Essex." This operation took so much
time, that, by the time it was concluded, day dawned over the ocean;
and the attack upon the British frigate was abandoned.

Again the "Essex" continued her cruise in search of an enemy worthy of
her metal. For two or three days she beat about the ocean in the usual
track of ships, without sighting a single sail. The ship had been so
disguised, that the keenest-eyed lookout would never have taken her
for a ship-of-war. The top-gallant masts were housed, the ports of the
gun-deck closed in, and her usually trim cordage and nicely squared
yards were now set in a way that only the most shiftless of merchant
skippers would tolerate. Not many days passed before the enemy fell
into the trap thus set for him.

When on the 13th of August Capt. Porter learned that a sail to
windward, apparently a British man-of-war, was bearing down upon the
"Essex," he carried his little bit of acting still further. Instead of
the great crowd of agile sailors that spring into the rigging of a
man-of-war, at the order to make sail, only a handful, in obedience to
Porter's orders, awkwardly set on the "Essex" all the sail she would
carry. Two long, heavy cables dragging in the water astern so retarded
the ship, that the stranger, coming down gallantly, thought he had
fallen in with a lumbering old American merchantman, which was making
frantic, but futile, efforts to escape.

Had the British captain been able to look behind the closed ports of
the "Essex," he would have formed a very different idea of the
character of his chase. He would have seen a roomy gun-deck,
glistening with that whiteness seen only on the decks of well-kept
men-of-war. Down either side of the deck stretched a row of heavy
carronades, each with its crew of gunners grouped about the breech,
and each shotted and primed ready for the opening volley. From the
magazine amidships, to the gun-deck, reached a line of stewards,
waiters, and cooks, ready to pass up cartridges; for on a man-of-war,
in action, no one is an idler. Active boys were skurrying about the
deck, barefooted, and stripped to the waist. These were the "powder
monkeys," whose duty it would be, when the action opened, to take the
cartridges from the line of powder-passers and car