that the enemy was happy enough to let her slip away when the wind freshened.  On another occasion she engaged a British armed ship of vastly superior strength, off the Surinam River, and forced her to run ashore.  Probably the most valuable prize taken in the war fell to her guns—­the ship “Queen,” with a cargo invoiced at L90,000.  Indeed, such had been her audacity, and so many her successes, that the British were eager for her capture or destruction, above that of any other privateer.

In September, 1814, the “General Armstrong,” now under command of Captain Samuel G. Reid, was at anchor in the harbor at Fayal, a port of Portugal, when her commander saw a British war-brig come nosing her way into the harbor.  Soon after another vessel appeared, and then a third, larger than the first two, and all flying the British ensign.  Captain Reid immediately began to fear for his safety.  It was true that he was in a neutral port, and under the law of nations exempt from attack, but the British had never manifested that extreme respect for neutrality that they exacted of President Washington when France tried to fit out privateers in our ports.  More than once they had attacked and destroyed our vessels in neutral ports, and, indeed, it seemed that the British test of neutrality was whether the nation whose flag was thus affronted, was able or likely to resent it.  Portugal was not such a nation.

All this was clear to Captain Reid, and when he saw a rapid signaling begun between the three vessels of the enemy, he felt confident that he was to be attacked.  He had already discovered that the strangers were the 74-gun ship of the line “Plantagenet,” the 38-gun frigate “Rota,” and the 18-gun war-brig “Carnation,” comprising a force against which he could not hope to win a victory.  The night came on clear, with a bright moon, and as the American captain saw boats from the two smaller vessels rallying about the larger one, he got out his sweeps and began moving his vessel inshore, so as to get under the guns of the decrepit fort, with which Portugal guarded her harbor.  At this, four boats crowded with men, put out from the side of the British ship, and made for the privateer, seeing which, Reid dropped anchor and put springs on his cables, so as to keep his broadside to bear on the enemy as they approached.  Then he shouted to the British, warning them to keep off, or he would fire.  They paid no attention to the warning, but pressed on, when he opened a brisk fire upon them.  For a time there was a lively interchange of shots, but the superior marksmanship of the Americans soon drove the enemy out of range with heavy casualties.  The British retreated to their ships with a hatred for the Yankee privateer even more bitter than that which had impelled them to the lawless attack, and a fiercer determination for her destruction.