After five days of hard fighting with the strong N.E. trade, blowing for the most part half a gale of wind, and with thick and dirty weather, the enemy is at length overcome, the sky clears, and the Sumter’s head is turned towards Europe.  And now for a time Yankee commerce was to have a respite, its relentless little enemy directing its attention exclusively towards maturing her voyage across the Atlantic.  She had at this time but sixty days’ water for her own crew, in addition to whom there were now the six prisoners taken from the schooner.  The passage, too, would have to be made for the most part under canvas, and would probably not occupy less than fifty days.  Of course, she had now but six or seven days’ supply of coal—­a small reserve in case of emergency, and hardly sufficient to enable her to cruise a few days on the other side, and, if possible, not go quite “empty-handed” into port.

Still the days were not altogether uneventful, and before the week was out, a fine prize ran, as it were, into her very arms.  Of this capture the journal gives the following account:—­

Tuesday, December 3rd.—­At 6.30 A.M.  Sail, ho! a point on the starboard bow.  At 7.30 the sail, which was standing in nearly the opposite direction from ourselves, approached us within a couple of miles.  We hoisted French colours, when she showed United States’.  Took in all the studding sails, hauled by the wind, tacked, and fired a shotted gun.  The stranger immediately hove to.  Lowered a boat, and sent a lieutenant on board of him.  Stood on and tacked, and having brought the stranger under my guns, I began to feel sure of him (our smoke stack was down, and we could not have raised steam in less than two hours and a half).  He proved to be the ship Vigilant, of Bath, Maine, bound from New York to the guano island of Sombrero, in ballast.  Captured him.  Took from on board chronometer, charts, &c., and a nine pounder rifled gun, with ammunition, &c.  Set him on fire, and at 3 P.M. made sail.  This was a fine new ship, being only two years old, and worth about 40,000 dollars.

Lat. 29.10 N., Long. 57.2-2 W. Steering E. by N. We received a large supply of New York papers to the 21st November.  We learned from these papers that the San Jacinto was in search of us when she took Messrs. Mason and Slidell from on board the Trent.  The enemy has thus done us the honour to send in pursuit of us the Powhattan, the Niagara, the Iroquois, the Keystone State, and the San Jacinto.

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Dirty weather now for several days, the little vessel rolling and straining, and withal beginning to leak to an extent which caused no small anxiety to those in command.  Still, however, she was quite up to mischief, and on the 8th December, the Ebenezer Dodge, twelve days from New Bedford, bound to the Pacific on a whaling voyage, was added to the fatal list.  Forty-three prisoners were now on board, cooped up with the crew in the narrow berth deck, when the weather forbade their appearance on deck, and the little Sumter was beginning to feel herself overcrowded.