The English are in no wise backward. Down splash the small boats, in tumble the men, and presently they are pulling down upon the waiting Lieutenant Jones--twelve men for every one of his. The small boats have swivels mounted in their bows, and by way of preliminary, stand off from the six cockleshells, waging battle with their little bow guns. This is a mistake. Lieutenant Jones returns the fire from his cockleshells, sinks four of the small boats, and spills out the crews among the alligators. Unhappily, it is winter, and the alligators are sound asleep in the mud below, by which effect of the season the spilled ones are pulled aboard their sister boats with legs and arms intact.
Being reorganized, and having enough of swivel war, the English fleet of small boats rush the six cockleshells, and after a fierce struggle, take them by weight of numbers. The English Captain Lockyer, following the fight, wipes the blood from his face, which has been scratched by a cutlass, and reports to Admiral Cockrane his success, and adds:
“The American loss is, killed and wounded, sixty; English, ninety-four.”
Being masters of Lake Borgne, the English go about the landing of troops on Pine Island. The sixteen hundred first ashore are formed into an advance battalion and ordered forward. They go splashing through the swamps toward the river like so many muskrats, and in the wet, cold, dripping end crawl out on a narrow belt of sugar-cane stubble which bristles between the levee and the swamp from which they have emerged. Finding dry land under their feet, they cheer up a bit, and build fires to make comfortable their bivouac while waiting the coming of their comrades, still wallowing in the swamp.
Night descends, but finds those sixteen hundred of the English advance reasonably gay; for, while the present is distressing, their fellows by brigades will be with them in the morning, and they may then march on to sumptuous New Orleans, where--as goes their war word--theirs shall be the “Beauty and Booty” for which they have come so far. And so the chilled, starved sixteen hundred of that English advance hold out their benumbed hands to the fires, and console themselves with what the poet describes as “The Pleasures of Anticipation.” And in this instance, of course, the anticipations are sure of fulfillment, for what shall withstand them? The raw, cowardly militia of the country? Absurd!