LOSS OF THE MAGPIE. 209 
&tely with provisions and rigging, and offered to convoy the 
Peggy to London. The distance from New- York, their prox- 
imity to the English coast, together with the miserable state 
of the brigantine, induced the two captains to proceed to Eng- 
land. The voyage was prosperous ; only two men died, all 
the others gradually recovered their strength, Flatt himself 
was restored to perfect health, after having been so near the 
gates of death. 
^OSS OF THE MAGPIE, AND ESCAPE OF TWO 
OF HER CReV. 
I KNOW many men in the navy who have served their years 
and years afloat, who have passed through the rugged life of 
a sailor untouched by the enemy and unhurt by misfortune. 
How true it is, "that in the midst of life we are in death!" 
that the very moment of intoxicating joy may be our last of 
existence ; and the instant of the greatest apparent security 
the date of our death; — how vain are all our precautions 
against the unerring hand of fate ! 
The Magpie, a small schooner, under the command of Lieu- 
tenant Smith, an active, intelligent officer, was ordered to 
cruise between the Colorados, a shoal at the western extremi- 
ty of the island of Cuba, and the Havana, in order to intercept 
a piratical vessel which had committed innumerable depreda- 
tions both on shore and at sea, and which every trader had seen, 
bat none could accurately describe. It was a service of the ut- 
most importance, inasmuch as the existence of this vessel ren- 
dered higher insurances requisite. The merchant vessels 
dared not sail without a convoy, and the men-of-war were 
otherwise in great request in every part of Columbia and 
Mexico, to protect the merchants from the rapacity of the dif- 
ferent governments, or the constant revolutions, which threw 
the weak entirely on the power of the strongest, without a 
chance of assistance. 
The Magpie proceeded to her destination, and there remain- 
ed, in hopes of capturing the marauder. It was one evening 
when the sea-breeze had lulled, and the calm in being which 
occurs before tbe land-breeze commences, that the schooner 
lay upon the silent waters without a motion, with her head to- 
18* 
