The last night we spent at sea was rather nervous work.  We had reduced our coals to about three-quarters of a ton, and had to cross the Gulf Stream at the narrow part between the Florida coast and the Bahamas, a distance of twenty-eight miles, where the force of the current is four knots an hour.  Our coals were soon finished.  We cut up the available spars, oars, &c., burnt a hemp cable (that by the way made a capital blaze), and just managed to fetch across to the extreme western end of the group of islands belonging to Great Britain, where we anchored.

We couldn’t have steamed three miles further.  On the wild spot where we anchored there was fortunately a small heap of anthracite coal, that probably had been part of the cargo of some wreck, of which we took as much as would carry us to Nassau, and arrived there safely.  Thus the attempt to get into Savannah was a failure.  It was tried once afterwards by a steamer which managed to get well past the fort, but which stuck on a sand-bank shortly after doing so, and was captured in the morning.

It is not my intention to inflict on my readers any more anecdotes of my own doings in the ‘D——­n;’ suffice it to say that I had the good luck to make six round trips in her, in and out of Wilmington, and that I gave her over to the chief officer and went home to England with my spoils.  On arriving at Southampton, the first thing I saw in the ‘Times’ was a paragraph headed, ‘The Capture of the “D——­n."’ Poor little craft!  I learned afterwards how she was taken, which I will relate, and which will show that she died game.

The officer to whom I gave over charge was as fine a specimen of a seaman as well can be imagined, plucky, cool, and determined, and by the way he was a bit of a medico, as well as a sailor; for by his beneficial treatment of his patients we had very few complaints of sickness on board.  As our small dispensary was close to my cabin, I used to hear the conversation that took place between C——­ and his patients.  I will repeat one.

C. ‘Well, my man, what’s the matter with you?’

Patient. ‘Please, sir, I’ve got pains all over me.’

C. ‘Oh, all over you, are they; that’s bad.’

Then, during the pause, it was evident something was being mixed up, and I could hear C——­ say:  ’Here, take this, and come again in the evening.’ (Exit patient.) Then C. said to himself:  ’I don’t think he’ll come again; he has got two drops of the croton.  Skulking rascal, pains all over him, eh!’ I never heard the voice of that patient again; in fact, after a short time we had no cases of sickness on board.  C——­ explained to me that the only medicine he served out, as he called it, was croton oil; and that none of the crew came twice for treatment.