The sailors who were killed were, according to the usual custom, ordered to be thrown overboard as soon as they fell; for the sight of so many corpses lying around might appall the survivors at the guns.  A shot entering one of the portholes cut down two-thirds of a gun’s crew.  The captain of the next gun, dropping his lock string, which he had just pulled, turned over the heap of bodies to see who they were; when, perceiving an old messmate, who had sailed with him in many cruises, he burst into tears, and, taking the corpse up in his arms and going with it to the side, he held it over the water a moment, gazed on the silent pale face and cried: 

“Oh, God!  Tom—­Tom, has it come to this at last——­”

“D—­n your prayers! over with that thing! overboard with it and down to your gun!” roared a wounded lieutenant.  The order was obeyed, and the heart-stricken sailor returned to his post.

At last, having lost her fore and maintopmasts, her mizzenmast having been shot away to the deck, and her foreyard lying in two pieces on her shattered forecastle, having been hulled in a hundred places with round shot, the Macedonian was reduced to the last extremity.  Captain Garden ordered his signal quarter-master to strike the flag.

Never did Sukey hear a command with greater joy.  Never was a sailor so happy at being defeated.  When the order was given to strike the flag, one of Captain Garden’s officers, a man hated by the seamen for his tyranny, howled the most terrific remonstrances, and swore he would rather sink alongside than surrender.  Had he been captain, probably he would have done so.

Sukey and Tawney were among the boat’s crew which rowed Captain Garden to the enemy.  As, he touched the deck, Captain Garden saluted his captor, Captain Decatur, and offered him his sword; but it was courteously declined.  The victor remembered the dinner parties he and Captain Garden had enjoyed in Norfolk, previous to the breaking out of hostilities, and while both were in command of the very frigates now crippled on the sea.  The Macedonian had gone into Norfolk with despatches; while Decatur was in that port.  Then they had laughed and joked over their wine, and a wager of a beaver hat was said to have been made between them upon the event of the hostile meeting of their ships.

This was their next meeting.  Sukey and Tawney went home in the American frigate United States.  With Sukey’s return to his native country, the reader’s interest in the naval operations perhaps ceases.  Naval battles are the same, bloody and desperate, and the details of the fight with the Macedonian are the details of all others.  After briefly noticing the principal victories and defeats on sea, we shall take up again the characters in our story.