defeated enemy's
fleet which had escaped Lord Howe. They, unfortunately, were to windward
of us standing for Brest, but the nearest of them was not more than two
leagues distant. We made all possible sail to get between them and the
land. Fourteen sail of their effective ships of the line perceiving our
intention took their stations between us and their disabled vessels.
Towards sunset we exchanged some shot with the nearest without effect.

The night was now setting in with dark, squally weather from the W.S.W.,
when we reluctantly gave up the chase. I will not shock my reader's ears
with what the mids said on this occasion. Suffice it to say, that they
offered up their prayers most heartily: in this, they, like obedient young
officers, only followed the example of their gallant captain and most of
the lieutenants.

Six weeks after remaining with this squadron we were ordered to Plymouth
to fit for foreign service. The captain went on shore, and we did not see
him until his return from London with a commission in his pocket to
command a seventy-four-gun ship, into which, shortly after, we were all
turned over. We regretted leaving the frigate, for although she was one of
the small class, we were much attached to her. Not one of us mids had ever
served in a larger vessel than a frigate. On board this large ship we were
for some days puzzled to find out each other, and for the first time in
our lives we messed and slept by candle-light. In a few days we received
on board four additional lieutenants, six mids, a captain of marines, a
chaplain, schoolmaster, and two hundred more men, besides forty marines.
As my former messmate, the gunner of the frigate, did not join this ship,
I had to find another mess. One of the master's mates asked me if I would
join him and six other midshipmen, which I did. Our berth, or the place
where we messed, was on the orlop deck, designated by the name of cockpit,
where open daylight is almost as unknown as in one of the mines of
Cornwall. The mids' farthing candles and the sentinel's dark, dismal, not
very clean lanthorn just made a little more than darkness visible. When
the biscuits are manned, that is, infested by "bargemen," they may be
swallowed in this dark hole by wholesale, as it is next to an
impossibility to detect them, except they quit their stow-holes and crawl
out, and when they do, which is but seldom, they are made to run a race
for a trifling wager. On the home station barg