Two nights later, thatof the sixteenth of August, it was " pretty dark," and the tide was ;dso favorable ; and the mischief-laden sloops were unmoored, and allowed to drift with the tide, silently, up the river, toward their proposed victims. The jRo,se's tender is said to have been anchored as a look-out, ahead of the ships ; ' and Captain Thomas, without having been discovered by the enemy, steered his sloop alongside of her; grappled her; and lighted his tires. The flames from the burning vessels afTorded light to CajHain Fosdick, who, with very great ability, so directed his sloop that she fell alongside of the J'/ki /iLv, luid grappled her, notwithstanding every etlbrt of seamansliip, on board the ship, was made to prevent it. AV'ith her fires fiercely burning, the sloop continue*! alongside the P/iwni.v, nearly a quarter of an hour, during which time the latter was also set on fire, in four places; and she was finally saved from total destruction, " almost miraculously," by a sailor who leaped, naked, on board the sloop, and, with an axe, " disengaged the "chain of the grappling wliieh had " linked the two vessels together." ' It is said,* very reasonably, that the lowness of the burning sloop, when alongside of the viistly larger frigate, prevented the more complete ignition of the latter ; and that, after the vessels had been separated, tiie slooj) was sunk by her intended victim. We are told,'' also, that, as soon as she was disentangled from the burning sloop, "the Plurnix either cut "or slipped her cable; let fall her foresail; wore "around; and stood up the river; being imme- "diatcly veiled from the spectators by the darkness of " tlie night ;" that " the Jiose and the other two " tenders remained at their moorinurs, although it was