Captain Rowley had no sooner heard my story, which I made as short as possible, knowing that Marble and Neb had been cautioned on the subject, than he again took my hand, and welcomed me to his ship.  The mate was sent into the gun-room, and recommended to the hospitality of the lieutenants; while Neb was placed in the care of the cabin servants.  A short consultation was then held about the boat, which it was decided must be sent adrift, after its effects were passed out of it; the Briton having no use for such a launch, nor any place to stow it.  I stood at the gangway, and looked with a melancholy eye at this last remnant of the Dawn that I ever beheld:  a large eighty thousand dollars of my property vanishing from the earth, in the loss of that ship and her cargo.

Chapter XXIV.

  Some shout at victory’s loud acclaim,
    Some fall that victory to assure,
  But time divulges that in name,
    Alone, our triumphs are secure.

  Duo.

The Briton had come out of the Cove of Cork, only a few days before, and was bound on service, with orders to run off to the westward, a few hundred miles, and to cruise three months in a latitude that might cover the homeward-bound running ships, from the American provinces, of which there were many in that early period of the war.  This was not agreeable news to us, who had hoped to be landed somewhere immediately, and who had thought, at first, on seeing the ship carrying a press of sail to the westward that she might be going to Halifax.  There was no remedy, however, and we were fain to make the best of circumstances.  Captain Rowley promised to put us on board the first vessel that offered, and that was as much as we had a right, to ask of him.

More than two months passed without the Briton’s speaking, or even seeing a single sail!  To these vicissitudes is the seaman subject; at one time he is in the midst of craft, at another the ocean seems deserted to himself alone.  Captain Rowley ascribed this want of success to the fact that the war was inducing the running ships to collect in convoys, and that his orders carried him too far north to permit his falling in with the Americans, bound to and from Liverpool.  Whatever may have been the reason, however, the result was the same to us.  After the gale of the equinox, the Briton stood to the southward, as far as Madeira, such a change of ground being included in her instructions; and thence, after cruising three weeks in the neighbourhood of that island, she shaped her course for Plymouth.  In the whole, the frigate had, at that time, brought-to and boarded some thirty sail, all of whom were neutrals, and not one of whom was bound to a port that would do us any good.  The ship’s water getting low, we were now compelled to go in, and, as has been said, we made sail to the northward.  The afternoon of the very day the Briton left her second cruising ground, a strange ship was seen directly on our course, which was pronounced to be a frigate, before the sun set.