arter-deck battery,
respectfully accosted the captain--an old man by the name of Cardan--as
he passed them, in his rapid promenade, his spy-glass under his arm.
Again they assured him that they were not Englishmen, and that it was a
most bitter thing to lift their hands against the flag of that country
which harboured the mothers that bore them. They conjured him to
release them from their guns, and allow them to remain neutral during
the conflict. But when a ship of any nation is running into action, it
is no time for argument, small time for justice, and not much time for
humanity. Snatching a pistol from the belt of a boarder standing by,
the Captain levelled it at the heads of the three sailors, and
commanded them instantly to their quarters, under penalty of being shot
on the spot. So, side by side with his country's foes, Tawney and his
companions toiled at the guns, and fought out the fight to the last;
with the exception of one of them, who was killed at his post by one of
his own country's balls.

At length, having lost her fore and main-top-masts, and her mizzen-mast
having been shot away to the deck, and her fore-yard lying in two
pieces on her shattered forecastle, and in a hundred places having been
_hulled_ with round shot, the English frigate was reduced to the last
extremity. Captain Cardan ordered his signal quarter-master to strike
the flag.

Tawney was one of those who, at last, helped pull him on board the
Neversink. As he touched the deck, Cardan saluted Decatur, the hostile
commander, and offered his sword; but it was courteously declined.
Perhaps the victor remembered the dinner parties that he and the
Englishman had enjoyed together in Norfolk, just previous to the
breaking out of hostilities--and while both were in command of the very
frigates now crippled on the sea. The Macedonian, it seems, had gone
into Norfolk with dispatches. _Then_ they had laughed and joked over
their wine, and a wager of a beaver hat was said to have been made
between them upon the event of the hostile meeting of their ships.

Gazing upon the heavy batteries before him, Cardan said to Decatur,
"This is a seventy-four, not a frigate; no wonder the day is yours!"

This remark was founded upon the Neversink's superiority in guns. The
Neversink's main-deck-batteries then consisted, as now, of
twenty-four-pounders; the Macedonian's of only eighteens. In all, the
Neversink numbered fifty-four guns and four hundred and fif