pen sea some British ship or other, sleeplessly
on the watch for her, bore down with disconcerting eagerness.

In September 1799 the _Hermione_ was lying in Puerto Cabello, while the
_Surprise_, a 28-gun frigate, under Captain Edward Hamilton, was
waiting outside, specially detailed by the admiral, Sir Hyde Parker, to
attack her the instant she put to sea. The _Surprise_ had less than
half the complement of the _Hermione_, and not much more than half her
weight of metal. But Hamilton was not only willing to fight the
Hermione in the open sea against such odds; he told the admiral that if
he would give him a barge and twenty men he would undertake to carry
the Hermione with his boats while lying in harbour. Parker pronounced
the scheme too desperate to be entertained, and refused Hamilton the
additional boat's crew for which he asked. Yet this was the very plan
which Hamilton actually carried out without the reinforcement for which
he had asked!

Hamilton, to tempt the _Hermione_ out, kept carefully out of sight of
Puerto Cabello to leeward, yet in such a position that if the Hermione
left the harbour her topsails must become visible to the look-outs on
the mastheads of the _Surprise_; and he kept that post until his
provisions failed. Then, as the _Hermione_ would not come out to him,
he determined to go into the _Hermione_. Hamilton was a silent,
much-meditating man, not apt to share his counsels with anybody. In
the cells of his brooding and solitary brain he prepared, down to the
minutest details, his plan for a dash at the _Hermione_--a ship, it
must be remembered, not only more than double his own in strength, but
lying moored head and stern in a strongly fortified port, under the
fire of batteries mounting nearly 200 guns, and protected, in addition,
by several gunboats. In a boat attack, too, Hamilton could carry only
part of his crew with him; he must leave enough hands on board his own
ship to work her. As a matter of fact, he put in his boats less than
100 men, and with them, in the blackness of night, rowed off to attack
a ship that carried 400 men, and was protected by the fire, including
her own broadsides, of nearly 300 guns! The odds were indeed so great
that the imagination of even British sailors, if allowed to meditate
long upon them, might become chilled. Hamilton therefore breathed not
a whisper of his plans, even to his officers, till he was ready to put
them into execution, and, when he