officer belonging to the British 18-gun brig-sloop Recruit, captain the honourable Warwick Lake. The Recruit soon afterwards sailed for the West Indies. In the month of November, when the crew of the Recruit were on short allowance of water, Jeffery, who was armourer's mate on board, took, according to Captain Lake's account, " a bottle with some rum in it, " from the gunner's cabin ; and on the 10th of December, by his own acknowledgment, went to the spruce-beer cask and drew off about two quarts. A shipmate saw and informed against Jeffery and Captain Lake ordered the sergeant of marines to " put him in the black list. "

On the 13th of December the Recruit was passing the desert island of Sombrero, which stands about 80 miles to the southwest of St. Christopher. Captain Lake then ordered Jeffery to be landed upon that island. Accordingly at 6 P.M., the poor fellow was placed in a boat, with the second lieutenant of the brig, Richard Cotton Mould, a midshipman and four seamen, and landed upon the uninhabited island of Sombrero, without shoes on his feet, or any other clothes than those on his back, and without even a biscuit for food. Observing that his feet were cut by the rocks, Lieutenant Mould gave him a pair of shoes, which he had begged of one of the men, together with a knife, and his own and the midshipman's pocket handkerchiefs for making signals. The lieutenant then advised this victim of tyranny and oppression to keep a sharp look-out for vessels, and pulled back to the Recruit. Her captain's vengeance being thus gratified, the brig filled and made sail from an island, until then little known except as a land-fall or point of bearing for navigators, but subsequently blazed about in every quarter of the globe, and never named without an execration upon the (must we say) British officer, who had acted so inhuman a part.

Rear-admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, the commander-in-chief at the Leeward islands, the instant the brig joined him, reprimanded Captain Lake for his conduct, and sent back the Recruit to Sombrero, to bring away the man if he should chance to be alive. On the 11th of February the Recruit anchored off the island, and her officers landed and searched it over ; but neither Jeffery, nor his body, nor his bones were any where to be found. By almost a miracle, as it will appear, the man's life was spared.

After he had been thus left to perish by his tyrant of a captain, Jeffery wandered about for eight days, subsisting upon some limpets that he found among the rocks, the crevices of which also afforded him rain water to drink. He saw several vessels pass, but was too weak to hail them at the distance at which they were. At length, on the morning of the ninth day, the schooner Adams, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, John Dennis, master, came to the island, saved the poor fellow from a lingering death, and landed him at Marblehead.

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