him, till the boat struck with such force upon the whale's head as to throw the oarsmen from their thwarts. At the same moment, the boat-steerer let fly his two harpoons into the mammoth body, which rolled over on its back; and before the boat could get clear of danger, being to the windward, a heavy sea struck it, and threw them directly into the whale's mouth. All of course sprang for their lives; and they had barely time to throw themselves clear of the boat before it was crushed to pieces by those ponderous jaws, and its ejected crew were, providentially, all picked up by another boat. At length, near eight o'clock, after forty hours of incessant exertion, this tenacious asserter of his vast animal vigour and territorial rights was killed.
SIR SIDNEY SMITH'S ESCAPE.
Sir Sidney Smith, who was charged by Admiral Hood with the duty of burning the French fleet at Toulon, in 1793, fell into the hands of the French two years later, and was treated with considerable severity as a prisoner of war. Confined in the Temple, that gloomy prison in Paris, in which the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette spent their last days, the unwholesome closeness of his dungeon brought on an illness which for a time threatened to put an end to his career. In this condition, prompted by the impulses of his own generous nature, he wrote a letter to Napoleon Bonaparte, imploring him to order that he, a
