The Kut Sang was dropping downstream as I locked my stateroom and made my way to the upper-deck, partly to get a last look at Manila, but more for the purpose of considering what I should do in the matter of telling Captain Riggs that I suspected Meeker was not a missionary.

Marble and I conversed a little longer on this subject, when a gun fired from the upper-deck gave us notice that the game was about to begin.

The "Isabel" bounds o'er the ripp'less waters; forts and dungeons, as we gaze astern, fade from the view; an indistinct shade is all by which the eye can recal the lovely isle of Cuba; and, lest memory should fail, the piles of oranges, about four feet square, all round the upper-deck, are ready to refresh it.

The flagship engaged Severndroog so closely that, by the small arm fire of men in the tops, and by firing two or three upper-deck guns at a time instead of in broadsides, the Severndroog gunners were hardly able to return a shot.