me he
had stowed away the remainder of his property where it would puzzle the
privateersmen to find it, and chuckled over the ingenuity by which he
expected to outwit the rascals.

It was not long before the armed schooner ranged alongside. She was
a formidable-looking craft, with a "long Tom" and a stout armament
besides. We were hailed in broken English: "You capitan, come on board
directly, and bring your papers."

The captain remonstrated, saying we were short-manned, and unable to
launch the boat, or to man it afterwards. They did not, or would not,
understand his objections, but repeated the order in a style which
silenced further remonstrance: "Come on board, Senor Capitan, this
minute, and bring your papers, or I shall shoot directly!"

There was no alternative. After much labor and heavy lifting we launched
the boat. Captain Moncrieff put his papers in his pocket, and leaving
Mr. Campbell in charge of the schooner, followed me into the yawl.
Putting his dignity along with his papers, he took an oar, I took
another, and we pulled for the privateer, which by this time was out of
hail to leeward. We went alongside, and were roughly ordered on
deck, where we found a motley set. Some of the crew were savage,
desperate-looking fellows:

"As ever scuttled ship, or cut a throat."

Others were squalid, ragged, and filthy, to a degree I had never before
witnessed. There was apparently but little discipline on board, but a
great deal of disputation and a continual jabbering. A ruffianly-looking
fellow, with a swarthy complexion and big black whiskers, who proved to
be the commander, beckoned Captain Moncrieff to the quarter-deck, where
he examined the schooner's papers and various letters, all of which
proved, beyond a doubt, that the schooner was an American vessel, bound
to a Patriot port on the Spanish Main.

Fortunately for us our captor was a Patriot privateer, and our little
vessel, under no pretext, could be regarded as a prize. If we had been
bound to a port on the Spanish Main where the inhabitants had not
thrown off their allegiance to the king or if the privateer had been a
Spaniard, the case would have been different, and the pilot-boat would
have been taken possession of and confiscated to the benefit of the
captors, probably without trial. In those days other nations, following
the example of France and England, trampled on the great principles of
international law so far as our insulted country was