afterwards, was in still greater need of the offices of
friendship. A hunting party was planned into
a neighbouring wood, consisting of four officers,
who agreed to divide two and two, and not to
penetrate more than a mile without forming a
junction. The colonel and captain were together;
they had not advanced above six hundred yards
when they were alarmed by a discharge of
musketry. Retracing their steps, they found six
armed savages engaged with the officers from
whom they had just separated. Two more
savages lay wounded upon the ground. The
colonel and captain levelling their pieces,
brought down two, and the remainder
precipitately fled towards a thicket where the
colonel was stationed; and, before he could
reload had beaten him down with their muskets,
and would have instantly despatched him with
their tomahawks, had not three of them been at
the moment transfixed by the bayonets of the
three other officers. The fourth savage was in
the act of striking the unconscious colonel,
when he, too, was brought to the ground by
Winterfield and bayoneted. The colonel had
sustained two terrible fractures of the skull,
and for weeks lay between life and death. The
surgeon, in despair of reducing the principal
fracture, recommended the application of the
trepan; but this was vehemently opposed by
the colonel, to whom the captain also gave his
support, alleging " that he had seen worse
fractures totally healed by a more patient process
under a less skilful surgeon." This declaration
had its full effect both on surgeon and patient.
The colonel recovered without the trepan, and
in gratitude to his friend, forced him to accept
a present of three thousand pounds.

One morning, word was brought by an officer
in command of twenty men, that he had been
chased to within half a league of the camp by a
band of more than a hundred savages. As the
colonel was still confined to his tent, Captain
Winterfield ordered out a hundred men, who
were to follow at a distance, while he himself,
with ten more men, advanced to reconnoitre.
At the distance of about five miles they fell into
an ambuscade of upwards of a hundred savages.
The captain's little party retreated, keeping up
a running fire until they reached their reserve,
when they immediately turned on their pursuers,
and totally routed them. They continued the
pursuit until they fell into a second ambuscade
of at least fifteen hundred savages, who
instantly cut off the foremost of the party. The
captain escaped with several wounds, a defeat,
and the loss of almost all his company.

His wounds compelled him to return to England,
and he set sail from New York, as the
bearer of despatches from General Cornwallis.
The vessel had only a single deck, and was
a bad sailer. The season was the depth of
winter, and they frequently shipped such
heavy seas that they could scarcely keep the
vessel above water, and occasionally they lost
their canvas in the heavy squalls of the Atlantic.
Having nearly run out their reckoning, they
began to look out for land, which they expected to
be in the north of Ireland; but, just at that time
when the weather became worse, their last standing
jib was blown to ribbons, and they had great
difficulty in bending the remaining part of the
sail. The next day the wind shifted to the
north-west, and blew still more violently, carrying
away their two fore-main shrouds. And
thus it continued for several days, until the
only bit of canvas they had left, was the
mainsail itself. The long conflict occasioned their
vessel to leak exceedingly, and their provisions
were so much exhausted that they found it
necessary to come to an allowance of two pounds
of bread a week for each person, besides a quart
of water and a pint of wine a day. They had
now been at sea more than two months, and
had only spoken two vessels, which were
unable to relieve them through the severity of the
gale. They soon fell under the necessity of
contracting the allowance made to each man,
and continued gradually to lessen it until every
morsel was exhausted, and not above two
gallons of dirty water remained in the bottom of
the cask. In this situation they beat upon the
water for seven days. Winterfield himself was,
from illness and fatigue, obliged to keep the
cabin; to complete their misfortunes, the
captain of the ship, the only conversable person
on board, died in the cot at his side. He had
been in a very weakly condition throughout the
passage, and sank suddenly under his privations,
leaving by will, the vessel—which was his own—
in the possession of Captain Winterfield.

The first thing the sailors did, after the
captain's death, was to seize the cargo, which
consisted of wine and brandy. They then
commenced the most reckless excess in drinking and
blasphemy. Captain Winterfield abstained from
wine, and gladly husbanded the dregs of the
water-cask, which afterwards proved of infinite
service to him. Their vessel continued to be
tossed about by the unabated gale, when
suddenly, in the midst of their despair, they were
transported with the discovery of a sail to
leeward. They hung out signals of distress,
and had the unspeakable satisfaction of coming
near enough to converse with the ship and
receive from the captain an assurance of relief.
Scarcely, however, had Winterfield crept back
to his cabin, when his people came running
below, with looks of unutterable despair, and
informed him that the vessel was making off
from them as fast as she could. It was too
true. The captain had shaken the reefs out of his
topsails and mainsail, and in five hours was
entirely out of sight. So long as the poor
fellows could retain the least trace of him, they
hung about the shrouds, or ran in a state of
frenzy from one part of the ship to another.
They pierced the air with their cries, and
strained their eyeballs to preserve the retreating
ship in sight. At this time Winterfield was
worn to a skeleton with fasting and fatigue; he
was labouring under a dreadful flux; and had
a severe rheumatism in his left knee; his sight
was also considerably impaired.

A desperate kind of gloom now took possession