We beat them on the main deck, till they could no longer stand, When our leader sings out "Quarter!" some mercy to command; But now the sherry which we made, with panic fill'd the horde, For some dived down the hatchways, and some leap'd overboard.
Close to their scudding heels our lads did their attentions pay, Cutlass in hand, to hold their own--to capture more than slay; Through slippery gore we fought our way, the quarter-deck to gain, And in loud cheers her mizen peak soon lost the flag of Spain.
Our prize we found was frigate-built, from Whydah she sail'd out, With near six hundred slaves on board, and eight score seamen stout; Equipp'd with stores of every sort, the missile war to wage, And twenty long guns through her ports seem'd frowning to engage.
Of those that were made prisoners, they all were put abaft, And we with well-arm'd sentinels paraded fore and aft; We pick'd up all the slaughter'd men, and hove them in the deep, Where, full in number fifty, they take their final sleep.
And twenty more disabled Dons, with eyelet holes and scars, Were treated by our surgeon the same as our own tars; For when they struck no time was lost, to the Primrose they were sent, And arms and legs, and broken heads, strict ordeal underwent.
Our chief was badly wounded, likewise the master too, One midshipman, the boatswain, and nine of our ship's crew; Besides three seamen killed outright, who thus resign'd their breath, And in the hour of vict'ry gained a patriotic death.
So now my story to conclude, although beyond my might,-- I write these lines to let you know, how loyal tars can fight; So toast the health of those brave lads that bore the palm away, And beat the Spanish ship Velos on the coast of Africa.
The art of the ventriloquist is well known: it consists in making his auditors believe that words and sounds proceed from certain persons and certain objects in his vicinity, while they are uttered by himself; and it is founded on that property of sound in virtue of which the human ear is unable to judge with any accuracy of the direction in which sounds reach it. This incapacity of the ear is the fertile source of many of those false judgments which impress a supernatural character upon sounds that have a fixed locality and a physical origin.--We know of a case, where a sort of hollow musical sound, originating within three or four feet of the ears of two persons in bed, baffled for months every attempt to ascertain its cause. Sometimes it seemed to issue from the roof, sometimes from a neighbouring apartment, but never from the spot from which it really came. Its supposed localities were carefully examined, but no cause for its production could be ascertained. Though it was always heard by both persons together, it was never heard when A. alone was in the apartment, and the time of its occurrence depended on the presence of B. This connected it with his destiny, and the imagination was not slow in turning the discovery to its own purposes. An event, however, which might never have occurred in the life-time of either party, revealed the real cause of the sound, the locality of which was never afterwards mistaken.