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little trading brig and put to sea with his squadron. Four days after he had left his shipwrecked comrades he was back again, and they hoisted him upon their shoulders and so lugged him up to Sir Hyde Parker's tent as the hero of the occasion. The Porcupine arrived a little later, so there was plenty of help for the marooned British tars. Two hundred and fifty of them were carried to Jamaica. Of the others "some had died of the wounds they received in getting on shore, some of drinking rum, and a few had straggled off into the country."

Lieutenant Archer was officially commended for the part he had played, and was promoted to command the frigate Tobago after a few months of duty on the admiral's staff. You will like to hear, I am sure, how he wound up the long letter home which contained the story of the last cruise of the Phoenix.

 

I must now begin to leave off, else my letter will lose its passage, which I should not like, after being ten days at different times writing it, beating up with a convoy to the northward, which is a reason that this epistle will never read well, for I never sat down with a proper disposition to go on with it. But as I knew something of the kind would please you, I was resolved to finish it; yet it will not bear an overhaul, so don't expose your son's nonsense. You must promise that should any one see it beside yourself, they must put this construction on it—that it was originally intended for the eyes of a mother only—as upon that supposition my feelings may be tolerated.