frigates to turn their fire to a more deserving object. The captain of la Ville de Varsovie, and the whole of his officers, then delivered their swords to Lieutenant Roberts, whose mortification must have been very great when he received directions to give them up to the first lieutenant of the Valiant 74, the captain of which ship had by that time taken upon himself the command of the advanced squadron: nor was this the only mortification he had to endure; for he found afterwards that those swords were distributed amongst officers in the squadron, without regard to his prior claim even for one of them. It must be admitted that he earned so trifling a memento, if not more.
Few persons have served more constantly, and very few have experienced in greater abundance the hard rubs incident to a sea life, than the subject of these Addenda. – The certainty of death, if in our Country’s cause, carries with it a consolation,, and it is met with fortitude: but the dark sanguinary blow of the assassin brings no alleviation; and such was the character of an attempt made upon the life of Lieutenant Roberts, when belonging to the Courageux 74, in 1811. He had been sent on board the United States’ frigate Essex, lying at the entrance of Hamoaze, to claim a deserter; the man in question, a black, not being able to produce an American protection, was unhesitatingly given up, and directed to return with his officer; but this he refused to do, swearing at the same time most vehemently. As he followed Lieutenant Roberts out of the captain’s cabin, he made use of some incoherent expression, seized an axe from among some carpenter’s tools, and made a blow at him: providentially, an American officer, on the opposite side of the half-deck, observed the fellow lay hold of the axe, and with a loud voice called out “Run, Sir, run for your life, run!” The lieutenant’s attention had luckily been drawn to the side of the deck where the officer was, and observing his gestures, indicative of a mind between hope and fear, he sprang forward, ran until he reached the fore-bitts, and then, turning round, found that the black had pursued him as far as the gun before the main-mast, on the breech of which the blood-thirsty
