ot force my finger into the gills, and as the animal
appeared quite dead, I hooked my finger into its mouth; but I made a sad
mistake, for the animal was alive, and immediately closed its jaws,
nipping my finger to the bone, and holding it so tight that I could not
withdraw it, and the pain was too great to allow me to pull it away by
main force, and tear my finger, which it held so fast. There I was,
caught in a trap, and made a prisoner by a flat-fish. Fortunately, I
hallooed loud enough to make O'Brien, who was close down to the boats,
with a large codfish under each arm, turn round and come to my
assistance. At first he could not help me, from laughing so much; but at
last he forced open the jaw of the fish with his cutlass, and I got my
finger out, but very badly torn indeed. I then took off my garter, tied
it round the tail of the skate, and dragged it to the boat, which was
all ready to shove off. The other boats had found it impossible to get
the vessels off without unloading--so, in pursuance of the captain's
orders, they were set on fire, and before we lost sight of them, had
burnt down to the water's edge. My finger was very bad for three weeks,
and the officers laughed at me very much, saying that I narrowly escaped
being made a prisoner of by an "old maid."

We continued our cruise along the coast, until we had run down into the
Bay of Arcason, where we captured two or three vessels, and obliged many
more to run on shore. And here we had an instance showing, how very
important it is that a captain of a man-of-war should be a good sailor,
and have his ship in such discipline as to be strictly obeyed by his
ship's company. I heard the officers unanimously assert, after the
danger was over, that nothing but the presence of mind which was shown
by Captain Savage could have saved the ship and her crew. We had chased
a convoy of vessels to the bottom of the bay: the wind was very fresh
when we hauled off, after running them on shore, and the surf on the
beach even at that time was so great, that they were certain to go to
pieces before they could be got afloat again. We were obliged to
double-reef the topsails as soon as we hauled to the wind, and the
weather looked very threatening. In an hour afterwards, the whole sky
was covered with one black cloud, which sank so low as nearly to touch
our mast-heads, and a tremendous sea, which appeared to have risen up
almost by magic, rolled in upon us, setting the vessel o