1815	Nautilus and Peacock	389

could not have stopped an exclamation, which their personal liberty, and every thing that was dear to them as men, would prompt them to utter. The same motives would have operated upon the two boats' crews ; and there cannot be a doubt, that they all gave some sort of intimation, that peace had been signed. But Captain Warrington, as the Peacock's purser could not help saying, wanted to have a little brush with the British brig. He saw what a diminutive vessel she was, and, accordingly, ordered his men to fire into her. They did so ; and the Nautilus was soon compelled to haul down her colours. But this the brig did not do until her gallant commander was most dangerously wounded, one seaman, two European invalids, and three lascars killed, her first lieutenant (mortally), two seamen, and five lascars wounded. The wound of Lieutenant Boyce was of a most serious description. A grape-shot, that measured two inches and one-third in diameter, entered at the outside of his hip, and passed out close under the backbone. This severe wound did not, however, disable him. In a few minutes a 32-pound shot struck obliquely on his right knee, shattering the joint, splintering the leg bone downwards and the thighbone a great way upwards. This, as may be supposed, laid the young officer prostrate on the deck. The dismounting of a bow gun, and four or five men wounded, appears to have been the extent of the injury sustained by the Peacock.

Fearful that these facts would come to light, Captain Warrington had additional reasons for endeavouring to lessen the enormity of his offence, by stating, in his official letter, that " lascars" were the only sufferers. Poor wretches ! and were they to be butchered with impunity, because their complexion and the American captain's were of different hues? Whose heart was the blackest, the transaction in which they lost their lives has already shown to the world. Had the Volage, as we said before, been the vessel that had hove in sight, every man in the Peacock, in less than three minutes after the master attendant at Anjier and the other British officers had come on board, would have been informed of the peace. Captain Warrington would have approached the stranger, if he approached at all, without opening his ports or displaying his helmets. In short, he that hectored so much in one case, would have cringed as much in the other: and the commander of the United States' sloop Peacock, would have run no risk of being by his government " blamed for ceasing," or rather, for not commencing, "hostilities, without more authentic evidence that peace had been concluded."

The first lieutenant of the Nautilus, Mr. Mayston, languished, until the 3d of December, a period of five months, when a mortification of his wound carried him off. About a fortnight after the action, Lieutenant Boyce suffered amputation very, near his hip, on account of the length and complication of the fracture.

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