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Week-days.|Sept., 1779.|Wind. |Courses.|Dist.|Lat.   |Long.  |Bearings.
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Friday,  \|24th, 25th. |S.S.W.|        |None.|As     |As     |As above. 
Saturday./|            |      |        |     |above. |above. |
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“The enemy’s sick and wounded and prisoners were brought on board.  At ten on the 25th, his ship, the Richard, sank.  Played chess with Mr. Merry, one of the enemy’s midshipmen.  Beat him twice out of three.

“There is a little French fellow named Travaillier among their volunteers.  When I first saw him he was naked to his waist.  He had used his coat for a wad, and his shirt wet to put out fire.  Plenty of our men had their coats burnt off, but they did not live to tell it.”

Then the diary relapses into the dreariness of most ship-diaries, till they come into the Texel, when it is to a certain extent relieved by discussions about exchanges.

* * * * *

Such a peep at the most remarkable frigate-action in history, as that action was seen by a boy in the dark, through such key-hole as the after-ports of one of the vessels would give him, stimulated us all to “ask for more,” and then to abuse Master Robert Heddart, “volunteer,” a little, that he had not gone into more detail.  Ingham defended his grandfather by saying that it was the way diaries always served you, which is true enough, and that the boy had literally told what he saw, which was also true enough, only he seemed to have seen “mighty little,” which, I suppose, should be spelled “mity little.”  When we said this, Ingham said it was all in the dark, and Haliburton added, that “the battle-lanterns were as bad as they could be,” Ingham said, however, that he thought there was more somewhere,—­he had often heard the old gentleman tell the story in vastly more detail.

Accordingly, a few days after, he sent me a yellow old letter on long foolscap sheets, in which the old gentleman had written out his recollections for Ingham’s own benefit, after some talk of old times on Thanksgiving evening.  It is all he has ever found in his grandfather’s rather tedious papers about the battle, and one passing allusion in it drops the curtain on Denis Duval.

Here it is.

    “JAMAICA PLAIN, NOV. 29, 1824.

“MY DEAR BOY,—­I am very glad to comply with your request about an account of the great battle between the Serapis and the Bon Homme Richard and her consort.  I had rather you should write out what I told you all on Thanksgiving evening at your mother’s, for you hold a better pen than I do.  But I know my memory of the event is strong, for it was the first fight I ever saw; and although it does not compare with Rodney’s great fight with De Grasse, which I saw also, yet there are circumstances