alive. All I can now say is that the
slaughter is very great. Among the killed this day is the
commissary-general, who with several other officers lost their lives,
while sitting at dinner, by a shell which burst among them.

10th.--The enemy opened several fresh batteries to-day. One of them
commanded the Charon, on which they began to cannonade with red-hot
shot. I heard of her danger from Tom Rockets, who came hurrying into
the battery with a look of as much concern as if the town had been
taken.

"They're at her, sir!" he exclaimed. "They're blazing away like fury,
and I see'd smoke, when last I looked at her, coming up her
main-hatchway. Poor old barkie! I don't by no manner of means like the
look of things."

I could ill spare any of my people from the battery, but I despatched a
master's mate, with Grampus, Rockets, and a few other men, to render
what assistance they could. They, however, very soon returned.

"I know'd it would be so," exclaimed old Grampus, throwing down his hat
and almost blubbering outright. "The dear old barkie, there's an end on
her. I know'd she was to have ill-luck from the time we first came
inside them Capes of Virginia; but I didn't think, that I didn't, that
she'd have been blown to blazes by them infernal hot iron balls, which
to my mind ain't fit for Christians to make use on, that they ain't.
Well, there was we a-waiting for a boat to get aboard her, though I
didn't think there was much use, seeing she was in a blaze from stem to
stern. In a few minutes the flames licked and coiled themselves up
round the masts and spars till they reached the mast-heads, and then she
broke adrift from her moorings, and, not content with getting burnt
herself, what should she do but drive aboard a transport which she set
on fire, and then there the two were burning away together, without the
power of mortal man to stop them. The enemy were still commanding them,
while our old barkie, to show that she was game to the last, kept firing
away her own guns as long as one of them remained mounted, and then up
she went in a shower of sparks and flames, and wasn't long in burning to
the water's edge."

The master's mate told me that, notwithstanding the circumstances Nol
had described, he could scarcely restrain him and the other men from
shoving off to get aboard the frigate. The inconvenience we suffered,
the loss of our things, was not to be compared to our regret for the
destruction,