ck into the boat. With the help of a comrade's tarry
fingers Ware bound up the bleeding stump with rough but energetic
surgery, climbed with his solitary hand on board the Chevrette, and
played a most gallant part in the fight.

The fight that captured the _Chevrette_ is almost without parallel.
Here was a ship carried off from an enemy's port, with the combined
fleets of France and Spain looking on. The enemy were not taken by
surprise; they did not merely defy attack, they invited it. The
British had to assail a force three times their number, with every
advantage of situation and arms. The British boats were exposed to a
heavy fire from the _Chevrette_ itself and from the shore batteries
before they came alongside. The crews fought their way up the sides of
the ship in the face of overwhelming odds; they got the vessel under
weigh while the fight still raged, and brought her out of a narrow and
difficult roadstead, before they had actually captured her. "All this
was done," to quote the "Naval Chronicle" for 1802, "in the presence of
the grand fleet of the enemy; it was done by nine boats out of fifteen,
which originally set out upon the expedition; it was done under the
conduct of an officer who, in the absence of the person appointed to
command, undertook it upon his own responsibility, and whose
intrepidity, judgment, and presence of mind, seconded by the wonderful
exertions of the officers and men under his command, succeeded in
effecting an enterprise which, by those who reflect upon its peculiar
circumstances, will ever be regarded with astonishment."

MOUNTAIN COMBATS

"At length the freshening western blast
Aside the shroud of battle cast;
And first the ridge of mingled spears
Above the brightening cloud appears;
And in the smoke the pennons flew,
As in the storm the white sea-mew.
Then marked they, dashing broad and far,
The broken billows of the war,
And plumed crests of chieftains brave
Floating like foam upon the wave,
But nought distinct they see."
--SCOTT.

The brilliant and heroic combats on the Nive belong to the later stages
of the Pyrenean campaign; and here, as on the Bidassoa, Soult had all
the advantages of position. He had a fortified camp and a great
fortress as his base; excellent roads linked the whole of his positions
together; he held the interior lines, and could reach any point in the
zone of operations in less time than his gr