cheers for the Alabama, which were lustily responded to by our fellow passengers.
As we cleared the end of the docks the little Alar poked nose into a huge sea and tried to stand erect on her her stern, but not being able to accomplish that feat, she fell down into the trough and the next wave passed over her, drenching to the skin every man aboard. She next tried to hold her stern in the air while she stood on her nose, and when the foaming sea reached her pilot house she rolled over on her side as though she was tired and wanted to take a nap; but she was disturbed by another comber picking her up and slamming her down on the other side with such force as to make every rib in her tiny body quiver. There were no secrets in that contracted space. The men aboard were supposed to be the crew of our cruiser, when we found her, and the cargo of the tug consisted of our guns, shipped as hardware in boxes, and our ammunition. We were all huddled up together, and plainly heard the engineer tell the captain that one more sea like the last one which came aboard would put out the fires. For more than three days and nights, cold and wet, with no place to sleep and little to eat, we stumbled and tumbled down the English Channel. When the gale abated at last, we saw on the horizon a trim-looking little brig-rigged steamer idly rolling on the swell of the sea, apparently waiting for something, and we steered for her. She proved to be the British(?) steamer Japan; her papers said that she was bound from Glasgow to Nagasaki, with an assorted cargo, but we doubted their accuracy.
Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who had bought and fitted out this ship, just completed at Dunbarton on the Clyde, had outwitted the British Government, but not Mr. Adams, who had warned the authorities of her character. How the British Government could have been held responsible for her escape without stopping their whole commerce is beyond my understanding. The vessel had not
