1812     JAVA AND CONSTITUTION     137

private characters, to land without any restraint." But who were these " three passengers, private characters," so generously exempted from parole ? No others it would seem, than the three sailors of the Java, who had been fools enough to enter the American service. To deduct them from the amount of prisoners received, would be making the Java's complement appear three men short of what, by a proper arrangement of the figures it could be proved to have been. To confess the fact, would never do. Therefore, the whole of the Java's passengers, naval, military, and civil, were paroled as " officers, petty officers, seamen, marines and boys, " and the hiatus made by the three traitors was cleverly filled up by three nominal " passengers, private characters, whom the commodore did not consider prisoners of war, and permitted to land without any restraint ; " and of whom, of course, no further account was taken. So that, as Captain Commodore Bainbridge officially declared, that the Java " certainly" had 60 killed ; and, as he took no notice whatever of the recaptured ship William, his 361 paroled and 12 unparoled prisoners showed, in the clearest manner, that the Java, when the action commenced had 433 men. But the commodore merely gives his prize " upwards of 400 men." What greater proof, then, can there be, of Captain Commodore Bainbridge's modesty, as well as of his scrupulous regard not to overstep the bounds of truth ?

On the 4th the young and gallant Captain Lambert breathed his last, and on the 5th was buried with military honours in Fort St.-Pedro, attended by the governor of St.-Salvador, the Condé Dos Arcos, and the Portuguese in general, but not (will it he believed ?) by either Captain Commodore Bainbridge or Captain Lawrence, or by any of their respective officers. But the commodore afterwards made some amends for a piece of disrespect so marked and public, by writing the following private note to Lieutenant-general Hislop. " Captain Commodore Bainbridge has learned, with real sorrow, the death of Captain Lambert. Though a political enemy, he could not but greatly respect him for the brave defence he made with his ship ; and Captain Commodore Bainbridge takes this occasion to observe, injustice to Lieutenant Chads, who fought the Java after Captain Lambert was wounded, that he did every thing for the defence of that ship, that a brave and skilful officer could do, and that further resistance would have been a wanton effusion of human blood:'

On the 6th, requiring more repairs than she could obtain in any foreign port, the Constitution got under way from St.-Salvador, and breaking up her cruise to the Pacific, bent her course towards home ; leaving the Hornet to blockade in the port the British sloop of war Bonne-Citoyenne. We shall by and by set this matter right, confining our attention at present to the Constitution ; who, without any further event of consequence, anchored, on the evening of the 15th of February, 1813, in the harbour of Boston. The reception given to Commodore

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