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During the night we had some thunder and lightning, first from the S.E., and then from the N.W.; and the wind springing up, very gently at first, freshened to a gale by morning, with showers of rain and hail. Communicated with the prize, and directed the Prizemaster, in case he should be blown off by a gale, to rendezvous at Saldanha Bay by the fifteenth of the month.
She had been chased and taken by the two ships that were seen in the W.N.W. The prizemaster, going on board in a hurry, forgot to take with him his reckoning: there is none in the log-book; and the dirty paper contains her work for the number of days since the privateer last left Corvo; with an unaccounted-for run, which I take to have been the chase, in his endeavour to find out her situation by back reckonings.
Last night a Bremen brig was wrecked off Point Monille. We heard her firing guns, and I feared at first it was our prize; and yet I could not conceive how my Prizemaster, who was acquainted with the soundings, could have made such a mistake. The weather has checked the throng of visitors, and yet a few get off to us, asking for autographs, and looking curiously at the ship.
This move on the part of the Indiaman's prizemaster proved the man to be possessed of both sagacity and foresight, for it threw us at once some four miles to leeward of him and compelled us forthwith to take in our studdingsails and brace sharp up in order to follow him, while he was now so close to the land that there was every prospect of his being able to get in and anchor under the shelter of a battery before we could overtake him.
Ensigns Palmer Drake and Richard Leyton, who were serving on board of the steamer while waiting for positions, were sent to the Tallahatchie, the first named as prizemaster, and the other as his first officer, with a prize crew of twenty men, and the two steamers got under way.
Bramble and I were fully aware that the promises of the prizemaster were only to cajole us, and that once in a French port, had we claimed the fulfilment of them, a kick would have been all which we should, in all probability, receive for our pains. About one o'clock in the morning I rose and went on deck.
"Very well, so long as you do it when you can, that is all I ask. Now," said he to the officer he had before addressed, "you'll have twenty men keep a sharp look-out and don't lose a moment in getting under weigh as soon as you can." The captain then returned to the privateer with the rest of the men, leaving the ship in charge of the prizemaster.
After a fortnight of extreme danger on shore, Lieutenant Mansfield showed symptoms of recovery, and in the same year received the rank of commander. The Grecian having captured a clipper Brazilian hermaphrodite brig, with nearly 500 slaves on board, Lieutenant D'Aguilar was placed in charge of her as prizemaster, with ten men, and ordered to proceed to Bahia, the sloop following him thither.
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