rticular
about picking up the bodies of their dead.

I did not venture to run the Dawn directly down in the Englishman's wake,
but we kept her off and on, rather, taking good care not to go within a
mile of her. All this time the Speedy was playing upon the Cerf's quarter.
The latter ship becoming too crippled to luff, while Mons. Menneval was
travelling off to leeward, unmolested, having obtained an advantage in the
way of speed, that he was unwilling to put in any jeopardy, by coming
again under fire. This officer did not want for spirit, but the French had
got to be so accustomed to defeat, in their naval encounters with the
English, that, like several other nations on the land, they Had begun to
look upon victory as hopeless. The Cerf was very nobly fought.
Notwithstanding the disadvantages under which she laboured, that ship held
out until the Black Prince had actually given her a close broadside on her
larboard quarter; the Speedy being kept the whole time on her starboard,
with great skill, pouring in a nearly unresisted fire. The Cerf struck
only as she found that the battle was to be two to one, and under so many
other disadvantages, in the bargain.

This closed the affair, so far as the fighting was concerned. La Desiree
standing on unmolested, though, as I afterwards learned, she was picked up
next morning by a homeward-bound English two-decker, hauling down her
colours without any resistance.

The reader may feel some curiosity to know how we fell on board the Dawn,
during the five hours that elapsed between the firing of the first and the
last guns, on this occasion; what was said among us, and how we proceeded
as soon as the victory was decided. The last he will learn, in the
regular course of the narrative; as for the first, it is soon told. It was
not easy to find four men who were more impartial, as between the
combatants, than those in the Dawn. My early preferences had certainly
been in favour of England, as was very generally the case among all the
better-educated Americans of my period, at least as low down as the war of
1812. But going beyond the scene of internal political discussion, and
substituting observation for the eulogies and sophisms of the newspapers,
had wrought divers changes in my opinion. England was then no more to me
than any other nation; I was not of the French school of politics,
however, and kept myself as much aloof from one of these foreign schools
of political logicians as