“You know enough to understand the service I require. If in the approaching conflict my brief career shall close, the story of my love must perish with me. In this sealed packet there are memorials, that, living, I could not part with, and, in death, must be destroyed. It is leaded--and should I fall, consign it to the same element where I shall find a grave. Farewell! I feel a strange assurance, that with this day’s events, whatever they may prove, my history is doomed to terminate. No matter! Where could it close more gloriously?”
He said, and quitted the cabin for the deck; and when I had secured the sealed packet in my breast, I followed him.
The chase had now assumed an interest almost impossible to be imagined. Both frigates, in the parlance of the sea, were “staggering under a press of canvass;” and the goal for which each vessel strained was a small harbour, with a narrow entrance through the centre of a reef of rocks. There, the Frenchman expected to find his safety--and we endeavoured to cut him off from this his haven of inglorious refuge. We were still two gun-shots astern--the harbour not a league off--the wind began to fail--and as the Harpy sailed best with a stiff breeze, we lost the advantage we had formerly possessed in speed. Indeed, the Frenchman’s escape seemed almost certain. He must gain the anchorage before we could bring him to close action; and, daring as our captain was, surely he would not venture into a roadstead on every side surrounded with heavy batteries, and approachable through a narrow opening in a reef of rocks?
Alas! Fortune may be tried too frequently--and even her chosen favourites will prove her at times capricious. Again, the breeze freshened, and the Harpy drew fast a-head. The vessels were now within cannon range--the chase-guns of both had opened--and at the third discharge from ours, the main-top-mast of the Frenchman came down. It is probable that fatal success induced our captain to take the step he did. Instead of bringing his frigate to the wind, he held his course, and desperately ran into a hostile harbour from which it was decreed we never should return.
The result of this rash act was brilliant as it proved disastrous. After a close engagement of forty minutes, the enemy’s frigate was totally dismasted, and driven--a wreck--upon the rocks; and Captain O’Brien having completed her destruction, endeavoured to work the Harpy out.