fast. Mr. Watkins's left hand was seamanship of Mr. Carter was about to shattered by a ball, and almost imme- repair the follies of the commander, diately afterwards he was shot through the helm was suddenly shifted, and the the body, and carried below, incapable Lady Mary Pelham stood away from of giving any further orders. The the fight. mate and the carpenter were both severely wounded, and the gunner had to be summoned from below to take command of the ship, Mr. Watkins calling out as he was carried below, a last order: "Fight the ship as long as you can stand." Mr. Carter's first thought was that this was a piece of cowardice on the part of the steersman, and knowing only one punishment for such an actiou in presence of the enemy he ran towards him, drawing his pistol, when the man cried out, "Don't kill me, sir ; it was the captain's order." The proper position of the ship could not be regained until all the fighting was over. Then, when the danger was practically past, the Lady Mary Pelham intervened and maintained a cannonade for some time. The privateer was too much damaged to wish to face a fresh combatant, and sheered off soon after four o'clock, having never brought the Lady Mary Pelham to close action nor inflicted on her any but trifling damage. The acting-commauder received a ball through his thigh, and one seaman was slightly hurt. When the gunner reached the deck he found the colors shot away, and at once rehoisted them. The pendant remained flying throughout the action. Seeing nearly half the crew killed or disabled, and the Americans preparing to board in great numbers, he judged it prudent to sink the mail. This was scarcely done before the enemy were upon them once more. There was another wild scuffle. Four only of the enemy set foot on the decks of the Montagu. One was killed as he touched them; two, one of whom was the first lieutenant of the privateer, were made prisoners. The fourth was recognized as a packetsman who had The circumstances of this action deserted at New York, and for such as were of course very closely investihe there was no quarter. In this fight gated, and a controversy arose out of the cook was killed, and the total num- them which was carried on with exber of casualties brought up to eigh-traordinary rancor, and was eventually teen, out of a complement of thirty-two. taken to the House of Commons itself. It is now necessary to turn to the The acting-commander of the Lady Lady Mary Pelham, which vessel, it Mary Pelham claimed to have acted will be remembered, had been ordered with notable courage and discretion ; by Captain Norway (as senior com- but this claim was consistently rejected mander) to take up her station ahead by the postmaster-general and by the of the Montagu on the starboard bow. | lords of the treasury whose adverse From this position an easy manœuvre would have laid her also alongside the privateer. opinion remained unshaken, and was expressed with considerable plainness. Upon Captain Norway's conduct the official verdict was to the effect that "his reputation stands too high to be assailed by anything that the partisans of Mr. can say." At this crisis, however, the incompetence of her commander began to manifest itself. His orders betrayed so absolute an ignorance of the management of a ship in action that, We may leave the packet captains at after some precious minutes had been this point. The actions of 1814 and wasted, Mr. Carter and Mr. Pocock, 1815 were no less glorious than those the master and mate, jointly repre- already described, and have been sented to him the propriety of deputing equally neglected. But the same obhis command to Mr. Carter. They un-servation could be made of the fights derstood that he had accepted this pro- of earlier years, and they cannot all posal, but at the moment when the be mentioned in this place. They were no child's play, the ac- guns of the fort prevented any assault. tions of these hardy Falmouth men, Thus, secure behind their walls, the and history has no excuse for passing garrison remained for some time in them by. They were fought by small quiet. On the glacis in front of the numbers of our sailors, but usually fort, and exposed to the fire of both against great numbers of the enemy. sides, lay twelve iron guns on skidding, They were not sought by the packet or pieces of wood, which the French officers, but when inevitable, were un-had not had time to bring into the fort. dertaken with no less high a spirit than if the enemy had been hunted from coast to coast till he turned to bay at last. They were in every way glorious to this country; and if this article should draw attention to the strange oblivion which has fallen on them, it will have achieved the writer's purpose. From Temple Bar. THE LAST FIGHT IN ARMOR.1 THE Constant attempts which are being made in our day to find protection for men against the deadly modern rifles lend interest to the account of what was probably the last appearance in the field of men in armor. In January, 1799, a party of some four hundred French held the town of Aquila, in the Abruzzo; a town defended by walls, and having a small, weak fort. Although the inhabitants of the town were well disposed towards the French, the peasantry, as in Spain, were most hostile, and when Championnet, with most of the French forces at Rome, had marched on Naples, they at once rose in insurrection, and attacked the party holding Aquila. On the 15th January the insurgents suddenly penetrated into the town, though they were soon driven out again; but in March they got parties into the town during the night, and drove the French into the fort. The bands of peasants united for the attack amounted to some ten or twelve thousand men; and, barricading the streets, and making loopholes in the walls of the houses, they soon made a line of defence which the French could not penetrate. On the other hand, work as the insurgents might, they had no artillery, and the 1 An incident from the forthcoming work, "The Marshals of Napoleon," by Colonel Phipps. Without carriages, they seemed safe, and the only precaution taken was to keep two of the guns of the fort, loaded with grape, laid on them during each night, with a gunner ready to fire on hearing the noise any attempt to move the pieces would occasion. One night, the gunner on guard, hearing a noise near the guns, fired one of his pieces, but the sound continued. The officer of the artillery ran to the spot, and again fired; yet still the sound did not cease, though it seemed to get further off. Nothing could be done but to wait for daylight, and then it was seen that the insurgents had placed a capstan in a house near the guns, and then had led a rope from it to make fast to the breech and to the trunnions of one of the coveted guns on the glacis. Round went the capstan, and the gun obeyed the rope at first, but its breech, dragging along the ground without rollers under it, soon made a furrow which became so deep as to stop its movement after the insurgents had got it some ten paces nearer them. It was a clever trick, but done by a man not learned in artillery matters, for had the gun been arranged for parbuckling (i.e., rolling) the work should have been easy enough. However, the French, looking anxiously over their parapets, were as much puzzled what to do as the besiegers. First, they turned their guns on the house to which the rope passed, and when they had smashed its wall, they saw the capstan had been placed in a cellar, and that for the present at least the fallen wall made it useless. What next? A great part of the life of an artillery officer is spent in making or in checking inventories of the stores in the magazines in his charge, a large proportion of which are generally obsolete oddities, most useful to some former | The scene is described, as we can well believe, to have been most remarkable, and to have had something picturesque and also diabolical about it. As the mailed figures moved in silence amongst the guns, their handspikes looking like maces, their silence and the slowness of their action seemed unnatural under the steady hail of bullets. The insurgents were believed to have thought hell itself had sent forth these extraordinary antagonists, ghosts of a past age; while the French on the ramparts, true to their nature, the first moment of anxiety over, burst into roars of laughter. generation whose wars have long ended, but becoming more and more formidable puzzles to succeeding military generations each year they lie in store. Boulart, the officer of artillery, ransacking his brains for the means of sending out men to spike the guns on the glacis, under the fire of the insurgents from the neighboring houses, suddenly remembered he had seen in his magazines some suits of plate armor, and he proposed to try whether, protected by them, men could not sally out and work in security under musketry fire. He got together twelve complete suits, and dressed out twelve Not only did the men succeed in gunners and grenadiers, thus selecting spiking the guns, but they even went big men, be it remarked. At a certain as far as the house where the capstan hour the garrison lined the covered had been placed, cut the rope, and way, and from thence and from the brought it into the fort. Then they fort opened a steady fire of musketry returned in triumph, for though they and of artillery on the lines of the had been struck many times, yet only insurgents. Then out marched the one man had been wounded in his arm, twelve knights of the eighteenth cen- and that because the piece of the artury, much in David's state of mind mor, the brassart, which should have when he complained he had not proved protected the limb, had been wrongly his armor. The men carried hand-fastened and had fallen off. After spikes, hammers, and spikes. Moving, this, the siege became a mere blockade naturally, slowly and awkwardly in their heavy steel mail, still they succeeded in completing their work under a hail of bullets from the insurgents. until the 23rd March, when a relieving force arrived, and the insurgents, taken between them and the garrison, were driven off with heavy loss. London, March 21, 1894. 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