Page:Narrative of the life and adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian.djvu/10

Rh badly cut to pieces. In this action we lost two men killed and the Captain badly wounded. About three days after the above action, about 4 o'clock A. M., we discovered an English frigate, which gave chase to us, and fired several guns, none of which reached us. This vessel we outsailed and left far behind by 2 o'clock P. M. Eight days after this chase, we reached St. Jago, and discharged our freight. Here we tarried three weeks and sold the brig to a Spanish gentleman. We then took passage in the American schooner Mary, bound to Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, upon the river Thames. This vessel had been trading under an English license, and had been taken by the schooner Rollo of Baltimore. Her captors were sending her home as a prize. Of this we were not made acquainted until we had got out to sea. When we set sail, we had nine men sick with the yellow fever, six of whom died and were consigned to the vastly deep, after the usual ceremony of the reading of prayers, &c. We were off the cast end of Cuba, when we discovered early in the morning, a huge sail to the eastward, which we took to be an American man-of-war, but soon found we had been fatally deceived, for she was a large English sloop-of-war called the Sapho, Capt. O' Brady. She fired a broad side which sent all hands below except the captain and mate.—She then stopped firing and run down upon us, and asked us if we did not know it was war time, to which we answered in the affirmative. She then run under our lee, and sent her launch and jolly boat with 30 men, who boarded us. The Capt. having the old license from the British Admiralty with him, presented it to the boarding master, who immediately went on deck and informed the Capt. of the sloop that the schooner had a good license, and was told by the Capt. to overhaul her well, and let her go, if all was right. The boarding master then went below and told the Capt. that he would overhaul his trunk, which he refused, but after some threats from the former, the latter gave up the keys. Search was then made and a commission from the schooner Rollo was found, and the uniform coat of the Captain. This took from us all chance of escape, for immediately after, a prize master and twelve men from the sloop were sent aboard of us to take charge. The Capt. of the English sloop then told the prize master to leave all the American sick board the prize, and