Twenty years at sea: Leaves from my old log-books

by Frederic Stanhope Hill

IN THE NAVAL SERVICE

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CHAPTER I
THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR

In 1859, after seventeen years of almost continuous sea service, for during all that time I had never been on shore more than two months at any one time, I determined to abandon the sea and pass the remainder of my life on shore.

The fact that I had just taken to myself a wife was, no doubt, a very potent factor in bringing me to this decision, which was strengthened by a favorable opportunity being presented just then for investing my savings in a safe commercial enterprise in Boston.

So I fell in with it, rented a nice little house in a pleasant suburb within sight of the gilded dome of the State House, and there set up my lares and penates.

At first this radical change from the free and easy habits of a sea life to the more rigid conventional routine of a mercantile career rather irked me, but by the end of a year I had shaken down into my new rôle, and should probably have become reasonably well contented to pass the remainder of my days in a ’longshore life, had it not been for the march of events, which, in bringing about the upheaval of a nation, sent me off on salt water again.

Early in April, 1861, the North was startled by the news of the attack upon Fort Sumter by the Southern forces, which followed so quickly after the secession of South Carolina, and on the 19th of the month the excitement in Boston was sent up to fever heat by the telegrams announcing the cowardly attack upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment by the Baltimore roughs, on its passage through that city.

The youngsters who are living in these peaceful days cannot possibly realize the state of public feeling in New England at that time. Business was practically suspended, and the sole thought of the people was to avenge the insult to our flag and the murder of our soldier boys. The enrolling officers worked day and night, and companies and regiments were raised, equipped, and hurried to the front with amazing alacrity.

In common with all my friends and neighbors, I, too, was full of patriotic zeal, and should probably have enlisted in one of the numerous regiments forming, had not my attention been directed to an article in the “Boston Transcript” which referred to the great number of resignations of Southern naval officers that were pouring in on the Navy Department, and expressed a fear that our navy would be hopelessly crippled, as the Southern officers predominated so greatly in that branch of the service.

This gave me an idea, and I at once called upon the late Robert Bennett Forbes, the public-spirited merchant and shipowner, whose wise counsels in this exigency had been sought by Mr. Welles, President Lincoln’s newly appointed Secretary of the Navy.

Mr. Forbes was in his private office, deeply immersed in his private correspondence, when I called, but he courteously listened to me when I asked him why the vacancies in the navy could not be filled by the intelligent and experienced officers of the mercantile marine.

“I have already made such a suggestion to the Secretary of the Navy, Captain Kelson,” said he, “and I have also sent him a list of a number of gentlemen whom I consider competent to fill the position of ‘master’ in the navy.”

“Mr. Forbes,” I responded, “will you not include my name in your list? You know something of my qualifications, I think.”

With the promptitude that was a very notable characteristic of the man, he turned to his desk and wrote a brief letter to Mr. Welles, which he handed to me unsealed. “Take that on to Washington, yourself, Captain Kelson, and to supplement it, get half a dozen others from Boston shipowners who know you.”

I did as he suggested, and within twenty-four hours was on my way to Washington. My interview with the Secretary was brief, but to the point. He read all my letters, asked me a half dozen pregnant questions, and then, writing a few words on a slip of paper, rang for a messenger and sent me with him across the corridor to the Bureau of Detail, where Captain Charles Henry Davis—afterward Rear Admiral Davis—prepared my appointment as an Acting Master in the United States Navy.

While the document was sent back to the Secretary for his signature I took the oath of allegiance, and my orders were at once made out to the United States steamer Richmond.

Thus quickly was I transformed into an officer in the navy and assigned to a ship, a fact I could not realize as I walked down the steps of the building, which I had entered less than an hour before as a private citizen. But events, both public and private, moved quickly in those stirring days.

On my way up Pennsylvania Avenue I stopped in at an outfitter’s and purchased a naval cap, and found an undress blue navy flannel blouse which fitted me. Upon the shoulders of this garment the tailor attached the straps of my grade, and, with trousers to match my coat, I returned to the hotel in time for dinner, a full-fledged officer, rather to the surprise of the clerk, who had seen me go out a few hours before in citizen’s costume.

The next morning, in company with a friend, I hired a horse and buggy, and, obtaining a pass, drove over the “long bridge” and out about ten miles, to the encampment of our army.

This was but a few weeks before the disastrous battle of Bull Run, but at the time of the visit our troops were in high feather and felt very confident that the war was to be only an affair of a few months; a mere military promenade to Richmond.

All the officers I met seemed so confident of the result that I became half converted to their theory, and feared that I had made a mistake in going into the navy for such a brief period as the war was to continue. The real awakening from our dream came sharply when these same troops, a month later, were pouring into Washington a beaten, disorganized rabble!

The following day I went on to New York, where I found the Richmond at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and, by a most curious coincidence, at the very wharf where I had gone on board the Bombay nearly twenty years before.

The Richmond had just arrived from the Mediterranean, whence she had been recalled by cablegram. After reporting to the executive officer I obtained a week’s leave of absence and returned to Boston.

During that brief time I made such arrangements as were necessary for the comfort of my little family and for the proper continuance of my business, in which there was very little doing just then, and at the end of the week reported again on board my ship at Brooklyn.

The Richmond was rated as a second-class steam sloop-of-war. She was pierced for twenty-six guns, but mounted twenty-two 9-inch Dahlgren guns in broadside. She was almost a new vessel, a good stanch ship of her class, which included the Hartford, the Brooklyn, and the Pensacola. She was rather slow, making with favorable conditions about ten knots under steam. Before the wind or at anchor in a seaway she had a capacity for rolling beyond that of any ship I ever saw, before or since. Her performances in that direction a year later, when we were on the blockade of Mobile, afforded a constant source of interest and admiration to the entire fleet, but were exceedingly unsatisfactory to us who were compelled to endure them. She was commanded by Captain John Pope, and had a complement of nearly four hundred officers and men.

I am thus particular in describing her, for she was to be my home for the next eventful two years.

Not long after I received my appointment, on June 30, 1861, news came to Washington of the escape from New Orleans of the Confederate privateer Sumter, under the command of Captain Rafael Semmes.

This steamer, originally the Havana, had been fitted out by the Confederate authorities, and although the mouth of the Mississippi was closely blockaded by the United States steamer Brooklyn, with two other ships, Semmes watched an opportunity when the Brooklyn was chasing a decoy vessel off shore, and dashing out, by her superior speed escaped our fleet.

Three days later, she captured and burned at sea the ship Golden Rocket, and by July 6 seven more prizes had been taken by this dashing privateer.

This, of course, created a tremendous excitement throughout the country, and our government sent every available ship they had in pursuit of her.

Orders also came to Captain Pope to hasten his preparations for sea, and on August 3 we sailed under sealed orders, which, when opened at sea, proved to be directions to make a thorough search for thirty days through the West India islands for the Sumter, and, failing to fall in with her, to join the West Gulf Squadron, then commanded by Flag Officer Mervine.

So we started on what proved to be a wild-goose chase, but which gave us an opportunity of making a very agreeable cruise, with the constant excitement of a possible capture that would have brought us no end of glory.

Among other incidents, we fell in one day with the wreck of Her Britannic Majesty’s ship Driver, piled up on a reef off Mariquana Island, with her crew living ashore under tents they had improvised from the ship’s sails.

We were boarded by her commanding officer, who bore the historic name of Horatio Nelson. He seemed to be a kind of nautical Mark Tapley, exceedingly jolly under very trying circumstances, and perfectly at ease, notwithstanding his ship was a total loss.

In fact, he appeared to look upon that as a mere incident of the cruise, and declined our offers of assistance, saying he “was all right, barring the blasted mosquitoes, don’t you know!” He was every day looking for the arrival of a British man-of-war to take them off, as he had sent a launch down to Port Royal for assistance.

At last, having nearly exhausted our coal, we steamed into Port Royal, Jamaica, on August 21, to obtain a fresh supply. Here we met the Powhatan, Commander David D. Porter, homeward bound after an ineffectual hunt after the Sumter.

After coaling, our thirty days having expired, we ran down to Key West and the Dry Tortugas, and stopping for a day off Pensacola at Fort Pickens, we received orders from the flagship to relieve the Brooklyn off the Passes of the Mississippi.

We anchored off the Pass à L’Outre, September 13, and soon after, the Brooklyn and St. Louis sailed for home, and the Niagara for Pensacola, leaving us with the Vincennes and the Preble to blockade the entrance to the river.

A week later, we were joined by the little steamer Water Witch, a vessel that had distinguished herself some years before in the ascent of the river Amazon. We then settled down to the monotonous and wearying routine duty that was to be our lot for nearly a year on this blockade.

CHAPTER II
A NIGHT ATTACK BY A CONFEDERATE RAM

From the time of the Richmond’s arrival at the Bélize we found ourselves the object of deep interest to a black, snaky-looking steamer that fell into the way of coming down the river daily to take a look at us and see what we were doing.

If she had confined her attentions to a mere reconnaissance it would not have so much mattered, but she frequently varied the monotony of this proceeding by throwing a rifle shot at us from a long range. We soon learned that this persistent and pestilent visitor was the Confederate steamer Ivy, in charge of Lieutenant-Commander Fry.

The Ivy was a converted tugboat, a technical term to be understood in a temporal, not a spiritual sense. She mounted a rifle gun, evidently a new acquisition, and she was testing it on us.

Fry was a former officer in our service and had been shipmates with our executive officer, Lieutenant-Commander Cummings, which may have accounted for his unremitting efforts to make things lively for us. To be sure he never succeeded in hitting us, but it is very far from amusing to be potted at daily with a 30-pound rifle gun, and with no opportunity of returning the compliment, as she kept discreetly out of the range of our smooth bore Dahlgrens.

However, after the Water Witch joined our fleet, we had a little easier time, as she was always signaled to chase whenever the Ivy annoyed us too much. This arrangement was a great relief to us, and at least had the merit of keeping the Water Witch in a high state of efficiency.

To render the blockade more effectual and to obviate the necessity of guarding the three mouths of the river, it was at last decided to cross the bar and take the ships up to the Head of the Passes, some twenty miles above our present station.

At the point where the river branches off, forming the Southwest, Northeast, and L’Outre passes, it was proposed to erect a battery on shore and there establish a depot, if possible, in anticipation of a movement against the rebel forts and the city of New Orleans in the near future.

To this end we had brought round from Fort Pickens, Lieutenant McFarland, United States Engineers, to superintend the construction of the battery, and we also had on board a quantity of sand-bags, pickaxes, and intrenching tools, but as we found no sand, as there was only mud in the vicinity, a schooner was ordered to Ship Island for a supply.

On September 26 the Richmond steamed around to the Southwest Pass and endeavored to cross the bar, but we grounded and were kept hard at work for three days in forcing the ship over. At last we succeeded, and anchored off Pilot Town, six miles above. The next day we captured a small schooner, the Frolic, coming down the river with a Confederate flag flying, and from her we obtained a supply of late New Orleans papers.

October 1 we ran up to the Head of the Passes and anchored, where we were shortly joined by the Vincennes and the Preble, both old-fashioned sailing ships of war, the little Water Witch and a merchant schooner carrying the 8-inch guns for our proposed shore battery.

We had long discussed in the wardroom the many advantages of this coveted position in the river, as compared with the discomforts of our anchorage outside the bar, and now that we had achieved it, with nothing to annoy us but occasional visits from the Ivy, we settled down to the placid enjoyment of our environments.

In fact we discovered that we even had “society” at our present station. This consisted of the family of a precious old scoundrel, half-fisherman, half-pirate, I imagine, when opportunity presented, who had a wife and a brace of buxom daughters.

In default of anything better presenting itself, some of our younger officers used to visit this fellow’s cabin, ostensibly to purchase fish for their messes, but really with the hope of gleaning some information from him as to the condition of affairs at the forts above.

The family always seemed glad to see our officers, especially when they brought offerings of coffee or tobacco, and, posing as “an original Union family,” spun them some very tough yarns. Meanwhile, as we later discovered at our cost, they were quietly selling us to their rebel friends up the river.

On October 12 a schooner arrived with coal, and the Richmond took her alongside to fill her bunkers. During that day we got one of our 9-inch guns on the topgallant forecastle, where it could be given a greater elevation than in broadside, hoping thus to increase its range for the special benefit of the Ivy on her next visit.

At sundown, as we had not yet taken in our full supply of coal, Captain Pope decided to continue coaling at night, that we might the sooner dispatch the schooner back to Pensacola for some needed material for the battery,—which was fated never to be built.

That night I was officer of the deck from eight to twelve o’clock. When I was relieved at midnight we were still coaling, with the two guns of the midship division run in on the port side to facilitate the work.

The night was very dark, the moon had set, and the mist, hanging low over the river, shut in the hulls of the other ships of the fleet near us, their masts and spars only being visible. Of course, the Richmond, from her size, must have been the most conspicuous object from the river, while the noise made in shoveling and hoisting the coal marked our position most admirably. A more favorable opportunity for a night attack could scarcely have been desired.

But a tired watch officer whose responsibilities have been turned over to his relief does not usually lose much time in reflecting upon possibilities; and I was soon sleeping the sleep of the just. For what transpired during the next four hours I have to depend upon the reports of others.

Master’s Mate Gibbs, in charge of the Frolic, anchored astern of us, says that at about 3.40 A. M., seeing a long, black object moving stealthily down the river, he hailed, “Richmond ahoy! There is a boat coming down the river on your port bow!”

He says that he repeated the warning, but the noise of the coaling probably prevented its being heard on board of our ship, as he received no response.

Commander French of the Preble reports that at 3.45 o’clock a midshipman rushed into his cabin, exclaiming, “Captain, here is a steamer right alongside of us!” When Captain French reached the deck, he says he “saw a ram, that looked like a large whale, steering toward us; but it changed its course to avoid us and made directly for the Richmond, and in an instant huge clouds of the densest black smoke rolled up from the strange vessel and we all expected to see the Richmond blow up!”

I, meanwhile, had been soundly sleeping, when I was rudely awakened by a tremendous shock, followed by the sound of the rattle we used as a signal to night quarters.

Jumping into my trousers, with my coat in one hand and my sword in the other, I, with the other wardroom officers, rushed on deck, fully expecting to find that we were boarded by the enemy,—as we very readily might have been in this moment of surprise!

Emerging from the hatchway, I saw on the port side amidships a smokestack just above our hammock nettings from which belched streams of black smoke! The vessel, whatever she was, was then slowly dropping astern, scraping our side, and at that moment she threw up a rocket, doubtless as a signal that she had accomplished her work!

I had but a moment to take in the condition of affairs, as I found sufficient occupation in getting the guns of my division run out.

Meanwhile, the ram had cleared herself from us and dropped slowly astern in the darkness. She soon reappeared again, however, steaming up stream as though preparing to give us another blow. As she came within range we depressed our guns and fired at her as best we could in the darkness. But as she was so low in the water and the mist was so thick she was a most difficult object to distinguish, and she soon disappeared.

By this time the Head of the Passes was in a state of tremendous excitement. The signal from the ram had been followed by the appearance of a line of fire-rafts up the river, drifting ominously down upon us, while by their light the spars of a bark-rigged vessel, and the smokestacks of two other steamers, could be seen in their rear. It was evidently a well planned attack in force.

Our little fleet, meanwhile, had all slipped their cables, and the Preble came standing across our stern under sail, her commander hailing: “What are my orders, sir?”

This was the critical point of the whole affair. Of course, it is very easy to say now what the orders should have been. But just at that moment things looked very squally for us. We had a hole five inches in diameter knocked clean through us and three planks were stove in two feet below the water line.

This was the result of the first blow from a ram that might, for all we knew, at any moment repeat her blow and send us to the bottom of the river. We had no idea then that she had disabled herself in her first essay, as proved to be the case, and might readily have been captured by us when daylight came.

We did know, however, that with the Richmond out of the way, our two sailing consorts in that swift-running river would prove an easy prey to the rebel steamers.

Oh no; it was not an easy question to decide in a moment. Farragut, as we all know, when in a tight place in Mobile bay, a year later, and the ship ahead of him answered his question why she had stopped with a reply, “Torpedoes ahead!” sang out: “Torpedoes be d—d; go ahead full speed!” But unfortunately in our navy in 1861 we did not have Farraguts “enough to go ’round.”

After hastily consulting with his executive officer, Captain Pope gave the order by night signal: “Proceed down the river.”

And down the river we all went, the Preble ahead, followed by the Vincennes, and we in the Richmond bringing up the rear. Captain Winslow of the Water Witch appears to have understood our signal as, “Act at discretion;” as he reports that he steamed over to the other side of the river, then northerly, easily clearing the fire-rafts, which drifted harmlessly ashore. At 5.30 A. M. he says “he made out our fleet three or four miles down the river and no enemy in sight above; although he could see the smoke of three or four steamers four or five miles up the river.” He then steamed down after us, picking up the Frolic on the way.

At early daylight I was directed by the captain to go up to the mizzen topmast crosstrees and report what was in sight. I found the Water Witch and Frolic steaming down to us, and far up the river I could distinguish the smoke of the Confederate steamers.

We soon came to the bar, and the Preble passed over safely, the Vincennes followed, but struck the bar with her stern up stream, and we came last and also took the bottom, fortunately swinging broadside up stream.

Meanwhile, with the daylight, the Ivy, the McCrea, and another rebel steamer came down, and, keeping at a very safe distance commenced their old game of firing at us at long range. It was very evident that they had a wholesome objection to our 9-inch guns at closer quarters.

Their shells passed over us and fell near us, but only one, a spent shell, came in through an after port, but fortunately it failed to explode, and Lieutenant Edward Terry calmly picked it up and threw it overboard.

The usual signal, “Chase the enemy,” was made to the Water Witch, and like a bantam rooster she steamed up toward the two steamers, and they withdrew out of range.

We now piped to breakfast, and made a signal to two coal ships anchored outside the bar to “get under weigh.” I was officer of the deck at the time, and, to my surprise, the quartermaster came to me at 9.30 and reported, “The Vincennes is being abandoned by her crew, sir!”

“Abandoned! What do you mean, Knight?”

“They are filling up her boats, sir, as fast as they can. Just look for yourself, sir!”

I hurried aft, as she lay somewhat on our port quarter, not more than three hundred yards distant, and sure enough, her boats were at her gangway and were being filled with men.

I sent the orderly down to report the matter to Captain Pope, and in a few moments the first boat reached us, and I received Captain Robert Handy, who came over the side with a very anxious face, and with a large American flag tied about his waist.

As he met Captain Pope he said: “In obedience to your signal, sir, I have abandoned my ship, leaving a slow match, connected with the magazine, burning!”

I shall never forget the expression of poor old Captain Pope’s face as he listened to this astonishing report. He was anything but a profane man in his daily habit, and I am sure that the Recording Angel dropped a tear over the swear words with which our commander emphasized his reply.

Meanwhile the important consideration in our minds was, how long that “slow match” might be expected to burn, and what effect the explosion of all the powder on board the Vincennes might have upon us,—perilously close neighbors as we unfortunately were.

By some fortunate chance, however, the match went out, and after waiting a proper time Captain Handy and his crew were sent back to their ship, one of her officers being detached, and sent in the Frolic to Barrataria, to bring the South Carolina to our assistance.

At 1 P. M. a steamer was seen coming out of Pass à L’Outre which proved to be the transport McClellan from Fort Pickens. She had supplies for us, and, best of all, our long-desired Parrott rifle gun, and had actually been almost up to the Head of the Passes in search of us.

It was a miracle that she had not been captured by the Confederates. Late that night the South Carolina, Captain James Alden, arrived.

Our Comedy of Errors is nearly ended. The following morning, with the aid of the two steamers, our fleet was all got afloat. All was saved but our honor, and that we felt very anxious about, for as the news of our affair got around to Pensacola, the other ships seemed to think we had made too good time down the river, and they spoke of our brush as “Pope’s Run.”

The outcome of this was that our ship sent a special request to be allowed to join in the coming attack upon Fort McCrea at Pensacola. Our request was granted and we joined with the Niagara on November 24 in that fight.

We were the inside ship, were struck several times, and had several killed and wounded. This made us all feel better, and during the next two years the Richmond was in all of Farragut’s fights. She was at New Orleans, twice passed the batteries at Vicksburg, was at Port Hudson, with a battery of our guns on shore during the siege, and was finally in the glorious Mobile fight. So that the Richmond made a record that placed her among the historic ships of the navy.

CHAPTER III
THE PASSAGE OF THE FORTS AND THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS

Early in March, 1862, while the Richmond was at Ship Island, where ten thousand troops had been brought together, Captain David Glasgow Farragut came out from New York in the United States steamship Hartford and took command of the West Gulf Squadron.

On the 20th of the month Major-General Benjamin F. Butler and his staff arrived at Ship Island, in the transport steamer Mississippi, and on the 25th the fourteen hundred troops on board of her were landed, and General Butler established his headquarters on shore.

Meanwhile from day to day, the vessels comprising Captain David D. Porter’s fleet of twenty-one bomb schooners were dropping in and anchoring in our vicinity, adding to the formidable appearance of the preparations now being actively made for the coming attack upon New Orleans by the army and navy.

There was at last no doubt that we were going at our work in good earnest, and although in the New Orleans papers, of which we occasionally obtained copies, the most exaggerated accounts were given of all that they were doing “to welcome the invaders to hospitable graves,” we of the navy were anxious to bring the matter to the test of battle as quickly as possible.

Of certain facts we were assured. We well knew that Forts Jackson and St. Philip mounted one hundred and twenty-eight heavy guns; that they were admirably situated in a bend of the river where it is but half a mile wide, and were calculated with their cross fire to repel a foe ascending the Mississippi against the current, which in the spring runs with great rapidity. We also knew that one, if not two heavy chains had lately been stretched across the river at this point; and we of the Richmond knew, from our own experience, that the rebels had at least one iron-plated ram capable of knocking a hole through any of the wooden vessels of our fleet.

Such of us as had read the history of the war of 1812 were also aware that the British fleet in 1815 ineffectually threw over one thousand 13-inch bombs—exactly such as we were now preparing to use—into Fort Jackson during a nine days’ siege of that work, which was then vastly inferior in strength to the present fort, and was the only defense of the river, where there were now two forts.

These facts we knew, but we were also informed by such deserters as came in to us, and also by the New Orleans papers, that a line of fortifications had been constructed all the way from the Forts to English Turn, just below the city, and also that two very large and very formidable iron-clad floating batteries were just being completed, to aid in making New Orleans impregnable against any force we could bring to bear upon it.

Against all this known and unknown force we had, under command of General Butler, fifteen thousand troops, most of them as yet untried in battle, and forty-seven vessels of war,—all wooden ships,—of which the Hartford, Richmond, Brooklyn, and Pensacola were the largest and heaviest armed ships, while seventeen of them were small gunboats of the Kennebec and Katahdin class, three were old-fashioned sailing vessels, of no particular value for the desired service, and twenty-one were mortar schooners, carrying one 13-inch mortar each, which threw shells weighing two hundred and fifteen pounds.

With this force Flag Officer Farragut was expected to accomplish a feat which up to that time had never yet been performed successfully,—to reduce two forts situated in swamps on the banks of a rapid stream, where there was no possibility of coöperation by the land forces, and then to pass seventy-five miles up a river guarded, as we believed, by earthworks bristling with guns, to the conquest of a city garrisoned by fifty thousand troops and defended by formidable iron-clad batteries!

Decidedly this was not to be child’s play, and although, as I have said, we of the fleet were eager for the coming fight, we were by no manner of means over-confident of success.

We were not to meet Indians nor Chinese; our battle was to be set against men whom we respected as foes, and who were quite as fertile in plans for defense as we possibly could be in our scheme of attack.

But during the next month, although we talked these matters over in the wardroom in the evenings, our days were too busily occupied for such thoughts. The first difficulty that confronted us was to get our fleet over the bar that jealously guards the delta of the Mississippi, and a full month of really hard work was required to accomplish this first step.

At last, however, on the 1st of April, all the vessels of the fleet were gathered something more than two miles below Fort Jackson, the bomb schooners moored close in to the right bank of the river.

The coast-survey officers at once went to work to establish marks and to construct a map for the purpose of getting the bomb vessels in proper position and in correct range for their attack upon the forts, and on the 18th of April the regular bombardment opened and was continued, almost without intermission, until our passage of the forts.

This bomb fire at first, to us of the fleet, was a matter of constant interest, and the topmast heads—we had sent down our topgallant and royal masts in stripping for the fight—were thronged with anxious spectators. But as no perceptible effect was produced on the forts by the bombardment, we soon lost our curiosity and came to the conclusion that after all this was simply to be the overture, but the real work would remain for us to accomplish.

Meanwhile the enemy were by no means inactive, and they soon resorted to one of their cherished plans of offense, from which they evidently hoped great things.

One night three enormous fire-rafts appeared bearing down upon us, blazing high with burning pitch and turpentine and sending out dense clouds of smoke. But for these we were prepared with an organized naval fire brigade, and before they came dangerously near our ships a fleet of boats was sent out with grapnels, which they fastened to the rafts and then quickly towed them into the middle of the river, where they drifted harmlessly past the ships, affording us an illumination on a grand scale.

The night of April 20 it was determined to make an attempt to cut the chain cable in preparation for our ascent of the river. This chain was stretched across the river from a point abreast of Fort Jackson to the opposite side of the river, where a small land battery had been constructed to cover it. The cable was supported by passing over a line of seven hulks anchored in the river.

Our plan was to blow up one of these hulks by a petard, to be exploded by an electric wire, and a “petard-man,” one Kroehl, was on board the flagship to work the apparatus.

This delicate and dangerous duty was placed in charge of Captain Bell, with the gunboats Pinola and Itasca, supported by the Kennebec, Winona, and Iroquois.

It was a wild night selected for the expedition, dark, rainy, with half a gale of wind blowing down the river. But few of us in the fleet went below that night, for we were all impressed with the importance and danger of the work, and we peered out into the darkness as the hour of ten drew nigh and the two leading vessels steamed noiselessly past us, every light concealed and their low hulls only visible by the closest observation.

To cover the attack the bomb schooners kept up a terrific and continuous fire upon the forts; five, seven, and once I counted nine of these enormous shells, with their trains of fire, in the air at the same time.

Anxiously we waited for the expected explosion of the petard, but time passed and nothing was seen or heard of our brave fellows! At last a signal rocket was thrown up from the left bank of the river, which was immediately answered by one from Fort Jackson, and then both forts opened fire.

Evidently our attack had been discovered. But had it failed? Not a sound came from our little fleet! A half hour lengthened out to an hour of fearful expectation. Where were our ships, were they all captured or destroyed?

Our men were frenzied with excitement, and murmurs went up, even from our well-disciplined crew, at our seeming inactivity!

At last a light was seen coming down the river, and then another, until one by one our gunboats appeared in the darkness and passed us to their anchorage. We counted them and found none missing, but we were compelled to possess our souls in patience, for not until morning could we learn the story of their gallant exploit.

The Pinola, with the petard-man on board, ran up to the cable, and, selecting a hulk near the middle of the line, the petard was successfully thrown on board, but in backing the ship off the wire became entangled and broke before the exploding current could be turned on.

The Itasca, under command of Captain Caldwell, had singled out her schooner, and running alongside, a party of men was thrown on board, and while they were endeavoring to unshackle the cable, the signal rocket was thrown up, warning the forts of our attack.

But nothing prevented Caldwell from accomplishing the work he had come to do. For, notwithstanding the fire of the fort, our boys deliberately cut the large cable, using a cold chisel and sledge hammer, and as the chain was severed and fell overboard, the line of schooners, with the Itasca fast to her prize, swung down stream, and our ship found herself grounded on the eastern shore!

Fortunately, the Pinola discovered the Itasca’s condition and came to her assistance, tugging at her for over an hour and parting two hawsers before she got her afloat; but at last she succeeded, and our little fleet returned triumphant, having removed the famous barrier and successfully accomplished one of the most gallant feats recorded in naval history.

As a token of their disgust the rebels sent down, toward morning, the very largest fire-raft they had yet constructed. In fact, it was so large that the Westfield, a former Brooklyn ferry boat, now armed and attached to our fleet, was sent out to tackle it.

She quietly put her nose under the raft, and turning on her steam hose, quenched the fire sufficiently to prevent taking fire herself, when she pushed it ashore, where it made a superb blaze until daylight.

On April 23 each ship of our fleet received an order from Farragut announcing that the passage of the forts would be attempted that night, and notifying all the commanding officers of the proposed order of battle.

The mortar boats were to remain in position and keep up a continuous fire. The six steamers attached to the mortar fleet were to join in the attack, but were not to attempt to pass the forts. The other ships were to pass in three lines, Farragut leading in the Hartford, we following him in the Richmond, with the Brooklyn astern of us, forming one division and passing on the Fort Jackson side.

Captain Theodorus Bailey led the line on the Fort St. Philip side, in the Cayuga, followed by the Pensacola, Mississippi, Oneida, Varuna, Katahdin, Kineo, and Wissahickon.

Captain Bell was to take the middle of the river in the Scioto, with the Iroquois, Pinola, Winona, Itasca, and Kennebec following. The order to all the ships was to keep in line and to push on past the forts as best they might.

We had not been mere idle observers during the past month on board the Richmond, but had been devising every method possible to strengthen our means of offense and defense. Among other ideas, we originated, through the suggestion of our first assistant engineer Hoyt, a plan that was adopted by other ships in the fleet, of protecting the boilers against shot by hanging our spare chain cables in lengths outside, in the line of the boilers, thus improvising an armor that was found quite effectual against solid shot as well as shell.

After receiving our final orders, Lieutenant-Commander Cummings, our executive officer, who was afterward killed at Port Hudson, directed that our decks should be whitewashed, a novel conceit, but one that enabled us to distinguish in the darkness any loose articles on deck, such as might otherwise have been difficult to find in the excitement of action.

When hammocks were piped down that evening, it was with the understanding that the men might sleep until midnight, when all hands were to be called quietly, without any of the customary noisy signals.

That was indeed a solemn time for us all as we gathered at the evening meal in the wardroom. We now had immediately before us a task the outcome of which none could predict; but, even if we were successful, it was highly improbable that the little band of eighteen officers who had now been together for two years, in the close and intimate relations that can only be found in the wardroom of a man-of-war, would ever again meet at the table in an unbroken body. Who would be the missing ones the next morning?

There was none of the merry jesting that usually marked our meals, and when the table was cleared every officer went to his stateroom, and I think each of us wrote some lines to his nearest and dearest in anticipation of what might happen before we saw another sun. I know, at least, that I wrote such a letter. Then lights were extinguished and all was quiet throughout the ship; such absolute quiet as is never found except just before a battle.

It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes when the quartermaster, with his hooded lantern, touched me, and said quietly, “All hands, sir!”

I hastened on deck. The night was dark and the air was chill. Officers and men were hurriedly but quietly going to their stations for action, which in our case was at the port battery.

My own division was amidships, where I had four 9-inch guns. My men came to their stations stripped for work, some of them without their shirts, their monkey-jackets knotted by the sleeves, hanging loosely about their shoulders.

Guns were at once cast loose and provided, and then all stood quietly awaiting developments. In the mean time our anchor was hove short, and we only waited the order to trip it and steam ahead. Down in the engine-room I could see, by the hatch near one of my guns, that the engineers were also on the alert, and the indicator showed that we had a heavy pressure of steam on.

Ah! here comes the Hartford, steaming up on our starboard quarter. As she comes abreast of us, our anchor is tripped, hove up, and we fall into place, a cable’s length astern of her, and steam ahead.

The other two divisions are dimly seen moving up in echelon. Everything is done with the utmost silence, save for the thunder of the mortar fleet, which has now gone at it, hammer and tongs, and the air above us is filled with the hurtling shells, made visible in their passage, like comets, by their trains of fire.

As yet our movement has not become known to the enemy, and every instant we are getting nearer to the forts, as yet unharmed.

Ah! they have seen us at last; and Fort Jackson belches out upon the Hartford a hail of shot and shell. We go ahead at full speed! Now we are ourselves under fire, and “Load and fire at will” is the order from the quarter deck!

Our ship throbs with the beat of the engines below and trembles with the shock from the continuous fire of our great guns.

For the next hour it is all madness! The captain of one of my guns is struck full in the face by a solid shot and his head is severed from his body; as he falls the lockstring in his hand is pulled and his gun is discharged! “Hurry the body below and load again!”

I call my junior officer to take my place while I go to my forward gun, and as I turn a shell explodes and tears his right arm away!

A young master’s mate hurries past me bearing a message to the captain, who is on the topgallant forecastle; as he goes up the ladder and touches his cap to his commander a rifle ball from the fort, whose walls we are close abreast of, strikes him in the forehead, and the poor boy falls dead, his message not yet delivered!

Now we are so close to the fort that we can look in at the lighted portholes; a solid shot passes between two of my men and buries itself in the mainmast not six inches above my head! I am covered with splinters, but unharmed.

The early dawn is breaking, and by its dim light and the blaze of a fire-raft drifting down past us I see just abreast of us a light river-boat crowded with rebel troops. As I look at her the captain of my No. 5 gun loads with grape and cannister, and depresses his gun as he trains it point blank upon the crowd of trembling wretches.

I dash at him and catch the lockstring from his hand, just in time to save them from an awful fate! We are all savages now, burning with the passion to kill, and the man looks at me resentfully as I frustrate his plan for a wholesale battue!

The fire upon us slackens, then ceases; I glance through a porthole; we are past the forts; both of them are astern of us, and, thank God, the battle is won!

CHAPTER IV
ON TO NEW ORLEANS

When Flag Officer Farragut—soon to be made Rear Admiral for this night’s work—looked about him from the quarter deck of the Hartford that glorious morning of the 24th of April which had made his name immortal, he counted fifteen of the seventeen vessels in his three divisions that had started with him the night before to pass the forts.

The Kennebec, as we learned later, had been disabled and had dropped back out of the fight; and the Varuna had run into a nest of rebel gunboats above the forts and had been sunk on the left bank of the river. Barring the loss of two of his smallest ships, his victorious fleet was now above the dreaded forts, and practically intact and ready for anything he might require of them at a moment’s notice.

So we all steamed up two or three miles above the forts and anchored, and the flagship signaled the fleet, “Go to breakfast.”

We gathered at the morning meal in the wardroom of the Richmond with very different feelings from those of the night before, for by a great providence death had not come to our mess and our little circle was unbroken, although two junior officers were among the dead and wounded. But in the hour of victory one does not stop to mourn for those who have gone on before; it is accepted as the fortune of war!

We had, of course, many personal experiences to relate and to compare, and there were some who said that the worst was yet before us; but as a rule we were very happy, and so well satisfied with our success that we did not think much of the future as we enjoyed our well-earned breakfast.

Coming up from the table and looking along the shore with my marine glass, I espied a large Confederate flag flying from a flagstaff on the river-bank where there was evidently a camp. As we all felt just then as though we owned the earth and the richness thereof, I went to Captain Alden and, on the ground of priority of discovery, asked permission to go on shore with my boat and pull down the flag.

The captain laughed at my eagerness and gave me leave to take the second cutter and go to the flagship and present my petition for permission to pull the flag down to Commodore Farragut.

I had the boat called away at once and started for the Hartford. I was taken into the cabin and there stated my case. “Why, certainly, Mr. Kelson,” said Farragut good-naturedly, “go ahead and pull down all the Confederate flags you can find. And, by the way, make my compliments to Captain Alden and tell him we shall proceed up the river at once.”

As I went over the side, Captain Boggs of the Varuna came on board to report the circumstances attending the loss of his ship.

Off I went in great glee. I landed, left a single boat-keeper in the boat, and with my eleven men walked up to the staff and was just hauling down the flag when my coxswain said, “Good Lord, Mr. Kelson, here comes a regiment of rebs!”

I looked, and sure enough, not quite a regiment, but a large body of Confederates in gray were marching down toward us and were already within easy gunshot. I supposed, of course, that we were to be called upon to surrender, and gathered my little body of men close together, hoping to be able to make a successful retreat to the boat, when the Confederates halted and I saw that they were all officers, about forty in number.

One stepped out from their midst and approached us; and as I came forward to meet him he saluted and said, “Whom have I the honor of addressing, sir?”

He was a fine looking fellow and his uniform was as fresh as though it had just come out of a tailor’s shop, while I was unshaven and was wearing my very oldest fatigue suit, that was powder stained after last night’s fight.

I informed the officer of my name, rank, and to what ship I belonged and he responded: “I am Colonel ——, in command of the —— Regiment, Louisiana Home Guards, and am commanding here at Camp Chalmette. With the guns of the Federal fleet bearing upon us, I consider it my duty to surrender my command to the forces of the United States!”

Never in all my varied experiences, before or since that morning, have I been so embarrassed as on the occasion when this remarkably spruce and very fluent gentleman tendered me his sword, and the other officers in their turn, in strict seniority, also handed me their side arms in token of their surrender “to the forces of the United States,” as represented by me and my boat’s crew!

I did my very best, however, to preserve my dignity and to give a strictly official air to the whole proceeding. But there was something so supremely ridiculous in these forty officers loading me down with their weapons, when I had come on shore merely for a flag, that I could scarcely conceal my mirth.

I informed them that I should duly present the matter for consideration to our fleet commander, and saluting with great solemnity retired to my boat, making the best show of my twelve sailors possible under the circumstances.

I carried my boat load of swords off to the Hartford, and Farragut sent Captain Broom with a file of marines to parole the officers and to return them their side arms. I held on to the flag, however, and I should have had it to this day had it not been lost at a church fair, where it had been borrowed for decorative purposes, some years later.

By ten o’clock the fleet got under weigh and steamed slowly up the river, keeping a careful lookout at every bend for the “line of batteries” of which we had so long heard but which we never discovered.

As a matter of fact we did not find a gun placed in position to oppose us until we came to Chalmette, three miles below the city, where half a dozen old 32-pounders opened upon us, but were at once silenced by the leading ship before the fleet could get within range.

All day of the 24th we steamed quietly up the river, past the sugar plantations, where sheets were hung out as flags of truce, and the only people visible were negroes who waved their hats to us in joyous welcome as we passed.

That night we anchored, getting under weigh early the next morning, and just at noon we rounded the bend in the river below the city, and New Orleans was in sight!

We steamed up close in to the levee, which was alive with people, and where great heaps of cotton bales were blazing that had been fired by the authorities to prevent them from falling into our hands. At the same time the unfinished iron-clad Louisiana came drifting down stream all ablaze.

Just at this time a sudden thunder-storm burst upon us, and the rain fell in torrents as we dropped our anchors in the stream nearly opposite the mint. It was, altogether, a scene not easily to be forgotten.

The fruitless negotiations which followed between Farragut and Mayor Munroe, that came so near terminating in the bombardment of the city by the fleet, are all matters of history, and could not here be even intelligently summarized, except at great length.

As is known, on May 1 General Butler and his troops came up to New Orleans and took formal possession of the city we had captured; and from that time it was fully restored to the Federal government, from which it had been alienated for more than a year.

A portion of the fleet, with the Richmond as the flagship, soon after ascended the Mississippi, receiving in turn the surrender of Baton Rouge and Natchez, but meeting with the first check at Vicksburg, where, in response to our demand, the city government by a bare majority of one vote declined to surrender; and as we, unfortunately, had no co-operating troops, we could not well enforce our demand, or, indeed, have held the city if we had been able to capture it.

Two regiments of troops at that time would have prevented the necessity for the terrible campaign of Vicksburg and the sacrifice of fifty thousand lives in the prolonged struggle which was to come.

The morning we sighted Vicksburg, as we were carefully feeling our way up the river, where ships of the size of ours had never before been seen, I had the morning watch, and while yet a few miles below the city we saw a curious-looking boat drifting down stream with two negroes as its occupants, who were directing their frail craft with rude paddles. As they came near us the darkeys made signs that they wished to communicate, so I slowed our engines and the men paddled alongside, and, catching the rope that was thrown to them, to our surprise both climbed on board, setting adrift their little craft, which was merely an old mortar-box.

The men were brought to me, and proved to be two very intelligent negroes, who, hearing by underground telegraph that “Massa Linkum’s big ships had whopped out de Confeds at New Orleans, and were coming up river to set de niggers free,” had improvised a boat, and had trusted to the current to drift them down to the ships.

They seemed perfectly convinced that our principal mission was to set them free, which, as it was before the Emancipation Proclamation had been written, was very far from being the case. In fact, it was directly the reverse, and commanding officers were as yet forbidden to receive or to harbor escaped slaves.

General Phelps had already got himself into trouble because he declined to return these fugitives to their masters, and it seemed at first as though these poor fellows would have to be put on shore, where their fate, if captured after having run away to us, might easily be imagined.

But Captain Alden of the Richmond was a very kind-hearted man, and he intimated unofficially that if the presence of these men was not brought to his notice he should know nothing about them. While their fate was thus hanging in the balance, the poor fellows were in a terrible state of anxiety; but when they learned that they might go to work as wardroom servants, without pay, their gratitude seemed to know no bounds.

To close this episode here, Jacob, the elder of the men, became my special servant on board of the Richmond; and when I later obtained a command, he went with me, rated as captain’s steward, and for two years he was my devoted servitor, and never have I had a more faithful, humble friend than this runaway slave.

It was a relief to both army and navy when Butler’s common-sense classification of the negroes as “contraband of war,” cut the Gordian knot and enabled us to grapple successfully with one of the most difficult problems of the war, although why we should have been so long in thus solving it always passed my comprehension.

Finding that Vicksburg would not surrender to the naval forces, we ran down the river to New Orleans, and after several months of preparation returned to Vicksburg, convoying a detachment of three thousand troops in river-boats. But as the rebels had been improving the shining hours by establishing a series of heavy batteries on the heights overlooking the river, and had a garrison of ten thousand men, we were no better able to cope with Vicksburg than we had been earlier in the summer.

We gallantly ran the batteries with our fleet, but we were no nearer to capturing the stronghold from above than from below. So in July we ran the batteries again, down river and at night this time, giving up the capture of Vicksburg to the army; and we all know the history of that long and tedious siege.

Preparations now commenced in good earnest for the naval attack upon Mobile, and we learned that for that service several of the new monitors were to be sent out to our fleet. But Farragut, now admiral, was a very old-fashioned sailor, with a strong prejudice in favor of wooden ships: he had gained all his victories in such ships, and he said he was too old a dog to learn new tricks.

So, as will be remembered, when he finally went into the Mobile fight, his flagship was still the wooden ship Hartford; and singular enough, the only vessel he lost in that memorable battle was the new iron-clad, Tecumseh. She was sunk by a torpedo, and went down with Captain Craven and one hundred and thirteen of her crew!

Had Farragut taken that vessel as his flagship, as he was urged to do, he would undoubtedly have lost his life with the others.

I was myself a witness of an exhibition of his aversion to iron-clads. On the 4th of July, 1862, our fleet and the squadron of Admiral Charles H. Davis were lying above Vicksburg where the two fleets had met a few days before. Davis’s flagship was the Benton, an iron-clad of which you will hear more later on in this narrative, and he was quite proud of her.

On the 4th Admiral Davis invited Admiral Farragut to go down with him in the Benton and “try the batteries,” as he worded it. As this was an excursion entirely after Farragut’s own taste, he at once accepted, and the two admirals steamed down the river on the trial trip.

The Benton carried a very heavy armament, but she was slow, and, being built on two hulls, did not handle well in a strong current. Arrived in good position, the ship opened fire on the upper shore battery, and the rebels were quite ready to respond.

They had lately received a new Whitworth gun, which they had just got in position, and they brought this into play on the Benton. By a sorry chance a shell from it entered one of the Benton’s bow ports and burst, killing and disabling several men.

This was getting exciting, and Farragut, after striving for a long time to control himself, burst out: “D—n it, Davis, I must go on deck! I feel as though I were shut up here in an iron pot, and I can’t stand it!”

And on deck he went, only compromising at last, through the entreaties of his friend, by entering the conning turret. This was the same instinct that sent him aloft in the Mobile fight. He wanted to see what was going on, and such a thing as fear of personal exposure never entered his mind.

CHAPTER V
CHASING A BLOCKADE RUNNER

In November, 1862, while we were lying off Baton Rouge in the Richmond, I was officially notified from Washington of my promotion to the grade of acting lieutenant. A week later I was ordered by Admiral Farragut to the command of the W. G. Anderson, then at the Pensacola Navy Yard.

The Anderson, a beautiful clipper bark built in Boston for the Cape of Good Hope trade, had been lately purchased by the government. She had been fitted out as a cruiser, her decks strengthened to carry an armament of six 32-pounders, two 24-pounder howitzers, and a 30-pounder Parrott rifle gun on the forecastle, and she had a full complement of fifteen officers and one hundred and forty men.

My orders were to proceed to the coast of Texas to join the fleet on the blockade, with my station at Aransas Bay. This was welcome news, as there was a great deal of blockade running in that quarter, which offered us a fine prospect for excitement and prize money. Our preparations were quickly completed, and a week after I had taken command we weighed anchor, saluted the flag officer’s pennant, and sailed for our station.

The first few days passed quietly, with nothing to interrupt the usual routine of sea life on board of a man-of-war. As we were now in the direct track of the blockade runners bound from the coast of Texas to Havana, their favorite port, I issued an order that a lookout should be kept at each masthead from daylight until dark; and I also offered a prize of twenty-five dollars to the man sighting any vessel that we should afterward capture.

As a result of these precautions the cry of “Sail ho!” was constantly heard from our vigilant lookouts; but the sails thus discovered proved, after much chasing, to be all legitimate traders, or at least their papers represented them as such, and we had our labor for our pains.

As I looked at our track, as laid out on the chart by the navigating officer, at the end of the fourth day, it resembled a Chinese puzzle much more than the course of a vessel bound to a certain point with a leading wind. So as I felt that I had no more time to lose, I laid my course for Galveston, where I was to report to Commodore Bell before going down to my station.

The following morning I was aroused by my orderly, who reported that the officer of the deck had made out a schooner on the lee beam standing to the eastward. Sending up word to keep away in chase, I bundled on my clothes, and hurrying on deck found our ship with yards squared standing down for the schooner.

The vessel was so far to the leeward of us that her hull was scarcely visible above the horizon, but the breeze was fresh and our canvas was drawing well, and it was soon apparent that we were gaining on her. By the time we piped to breakfast we had raised her hull, and I felt confident of overhauling her in a few hours.

But it now became evident that the schooner was by no means anxious that we should come to closer quarters, and proposed to prevent it if possible. Suddenly putting her helm up, she kept away before the wind and crowded on canvas until she looked like a great white gull.

This convinced us that we had at last fallen into luck, and that the schooner was what we had been so diligently seeking,—a blockade runner. To make assurance doubly sure, I gave the Parrott rifle its extreme elevation and sent a shell screaming down toward her, at the same time hoisting our colors, as a polite invitation for her to heave to and allow us to overhaul her.

But our courtesy passed unnoticed, and she displayed no colors in return. So we followed her example in making sail, and every yard of duck that could be boomed out from any part of the ship was brought into play.

We were evidently gaining on our chase, and everything seemed to promise well, when there was an ominous sound of slatting canvas, and looking aloft, I saw that the breeze was failing us. This was unfortunate, for a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, the forenoon was already well-nigh spent, and we were yet several miles astern of the schooner.

I ordered that all our sails should be hoisted taut and sheeted close home, but the wind continued to get lighter until there was scarcely enough breeze to give us steerage-way. Occasionally we could feel a slight puff of air, and, remembering the experience of the frigate Constitution when she was chased by two English ships in 1813, I ordered that whips be rigged aloft and the sails thoroughly drenched with salt water. Still, with all our efforts, it was evident that we were not materially lessening the difference between the two vessels, if indeed we were not losing ground.

After consultation with my executive officer, I decided that my only hope of securing our prize before dark, when she would easily evade us, was to send a party in one of our boats in chase. Accordingly Mr. Bailey had the first cutter called away, the crew carefully armed, and a small Butler machine gun mounted in the bow of the boat.

The chase was now, as we estimated, nearly six miles distant; and as she was all the time forging ahead two or three knots an hour, there was a prospect of a good long pull for it. But the bait was a tempting one and the boat crew were very ready to make the effort.

I arranged with Acting Master Taylor, who was to go in charge of the boat, that if night should overtake him before he could return to the ship I would lay her to, fire guns at intervals, and hoist signal lanterns so that we could easily be seen. He also took with him a number of rockets and Coston’s signals to burn if needed.

With my best wishes for his success Mr. Taylor shoved off, and his men pulled lustily toward the schooner. It was not necessary to give the order to keep a sharp lookout on the movements of the boat, for every man in the ship felt a personal interest in her, and all hands were watching her progress, from the masthead lookouts to the mess cooks, who hung gazing out of the ports whenever they could escape for a moment from their duties.

To pull a heavy man-of-war cutter six or eight miles in a seaway is not child’s play; and although the men buckled to their oars like heroes, it was slow work. The sun was getting low when the officer of the deck called my attention from the boat I was watching so anxiously through the glass to a heavy bank of black clouds making to the northward.

“I am afraid that we are going to have our wind, now that we don’t want it, sir,” he said.

A vivid flash of lightning, emphasized by a rattling clap of thunder, followed hard upon this remark.

“Yes, indeed; you must get in your studding sails and flying kites at once, Mr. Allen, for it is coming down upon us by the run!”

Mr. Bailey came on deck and took the trumpet, as executive officer, the boatswain’s call sounded shrill, and the light sails came rapidly in.

“Furl the topgallant sails, sir!” I cried. And they were barely in when the wind was howling.

“Stand by topsail halyards fore and aft, clew lines and reef tackles. Let go, clew down and haul out. Aloft, topmen, and put in two reefs!” was the next order.

I looked in vain for any sign of our boat. “Masthead there, can you see the cutter?”

“No, sir, the cutter and schooner are both entirely shut in!” was the reply.

By this time we were tearing through the water under our double reefs, keeping our course as nearly as possible toward where the boat had last been seen. The squall brought rain with it in torrents, and, as the darkness closed in, the desire to overhaul the schooner became second to that of picking up my boat and her crew. So I decided to heave the ship to and let Mr. Taylor find me, as I certainly could not expect to find him.

I ordered lanterns hoisted at each masthead and at the ends of the topsail yards, and directed that a gun be fired and a Coston signal burned every ten minutes.

By this time the squall had passed to leeward, the rain had ceased, and the moon was struggling out of the ragged-looking clouds.

Boom! went our first gun, and at the same time the Coston signal was ignited and flamed up, lighting all about us with its deep crimson glare.

“Sail ho!” yelled the forecastle lookout.

“Where away?”

“Close aboard on the starboard bow, sir!”

And there, sure enough, loomed the sails of a schooner on the port tack standing directly across our bow.

“And it’s the Johnnie!” exclaimed Mr. Bailey, as he gazed down from the forecastle in astonishment upon the vessel almost under our bowsprit, her decks piled up with cotton bales, and her crew standing thunderstruck at their perilous position.

I sprang upon the forecastle and hailed: “Heave to, or I’ll sink you! Ready with No. 1 gun, Mr. Allen!”

“All ready, sir!”

“Don’t fire! we surrender!” came quickly from the schooner, as she flew up in the wind and lay bobbing helplessly on our port bow.

“Send a boat at once to me with your captain. And let him bring his papers, if he has any!” I called out.

“We stove our boat the other day, sir, and she won’t float,” they replied.

“Very well; I will send my boat to you. Mr. Bailey, have the second cutter lowered, and send Mr. Allen on board that schooner to take charge of her with a dozen well-armed men. Let her captain and his crew come back here in our boat. Take a master’s mate with you, Mr. Allen!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” and the boat was called away and made ready.

“By the way, Mr. Allen,” I called out as the boat shoved off, “see if you can find out from them anything about Mr. Taylor. In dodging him they have probably run afoul of us.”

I had gone aft to see the boat off and to give these orders; and as they were executed I looked to see where the schooner lay, but could not find her.

“Forecastle there! where away is the schooner?” I hailed.

There was a moment’s pause, and then the hesitating reply came from the lookout, “She has drifted out of sight, sir; I can’t make her out!”

I hastened forward, and, sure enough, nothing could be seen of her.

“Schooner ahoy!” I hailed and listened, but no response came back.

A signal was burned, but it only served to show us our second cutter that I had just sent away, pulling aimlessly in the direction where we had last seen the schooner.

It was very evident that we were duped. While we had been lowering our boat she had quietly filled away, and had already such a start as to render a search for her in the darkness well-nigh hopeless, more particularly as two of my boats were now away from the ship.

Thoroughly vexed at the stupidity of the forecastle lookout, whose carelessness had permitted such a ruse to succeed, I recalled the second cutter, and paced my quarter deck, my mind occupied with most unpleasant reflections.

It was evident that I must remain with my ship hove to, or I should probably lose my first cutter, if she had not already gone to the bottom in the squall! It was certainly a remarkably bad quarter of an hour that I was having just then.

“C-r-r-r-a-c-k!” came the sound of firing to leeward, and up shot a rocket, leaving a trail of fire behind it like a meteor.

“Hurrah! there’s Taylor down there with his Butler coffee-mill! Fill away, Mr. Bailey, and make all sail! Be alive about it, or we shall not be in at the death! There he goes again! I don’t believe that schooner will get away from us this time!”

The yards flew round and we filled, as the topmen sprang aloft to turn out the reefs. The topsail yards flew to the mastheads, the topgallant sails were sheeted home with lightning speed, and we bore down upon the scene of conflict with all possible dispatch.

But the firing had already ceased, and we soon saw signal lanterns hoisted from the masts of the schooner that had given us such a chase.

“Well, sir, we have got her at last!” came over the water in Mr. Taylor’s familiar tones, as we approached.

“Glad to hear it, Mr. Taylor,” I replied; “but what have you got?”

“The schooner Royal Yacht, sir. She ran out of Galveston, through the whole blockading fleet, night before last. She has a cargo of one hundred and fifty bales of cotton, sir!”

“Give the cutter’s crew three cheers, men!” I said, and our crew sprang into the rigging and gave three as hearty cheers as ever came from one hundred throats.

“I will send Mr. Allen on board the schooner with a prize crew, Mr. Taylor, and you can return in your own boat with the schooner’s captain and crew.”

This exchange was soon made, and Mr. Taylor came on board with his prisoners, and gave me the particulars of the capture. When the squall struck us, he had been already five hours in chase. He lost sight of the schooner, and for a time had his hands full in keeping his boat from filling. When the wind lulled, as nothing was in sight, he determined to return to the ship, and, hearing our guns and seeing our signals, he was making the best of his way back to us, when the schooner that was escaping from us almost ran him down.

He at once opened fire from his Butler gun at short range, and drove the schooner’s crew from the deck by a well-directed rifle fire. Left without a steersman, the vessel yawed, the cutter dashed alongside, the boat’s crew sprang on board, and the prize was taken!

Upon investigation, it proved that the Royal Yacht had run out from Galveston two nights before; and, skillfully piloted by her captain, who was very familiar with the intricacies of the bay, she had passed through our entire blockading squadron, under cover of the darkness, and had got to sea unnoticed.

By ten o’clock we were again on our course for Galveston, with the Royal Yacht following in our wake, the cynosure of many watchful eyes. There was a good leading breeze, and by the same hour the following night we anchored among the Galveston fleet, and I reported my arrival to Commodore Bell.

The officers of the various vessels of the blockading fleet were very positive in their assertions that the Royal Yacht could not by any possibility have escaped from Galveston. But we found Galveston papers on board, printed the morning of the day she escaped, and much to their mortification the doubters were compelled to acknowledge the unwelcome fact.

The next day I dispatched the schooner to Key West with a prize crew, where in due time she was libeled, condemned, and sold with her cargo for nearly sixty thousand dollars. Of the proceeds of the sale the government received one half, and the other moiety was divided among my officers and crew.

As I had captured her on the high seas, out of sight of any other vessel, I received, as commanding officer, one tenth of our half, which made a very agreeable addition to my bank account, and was a pleasant souvenir of my first capture of a blockade runner.

CHAPTER VI
A NARROW ESCAPE

It was Christmas morning, and very early on Christmas morning, for the sun, like a great ball of burnished copper, was just rising above the mist that hung low along the eastern horizon, gilding with the first flush of dawn the cold, gray clouds and shimmering on the crest of the waves that rippled in the freshening breeze.

Under all sail and braced close to the wind, a war-ship is standing in for the land, where a long stretch of low sand hills is broken by the entrance to a bay, an ugly line of breakers making across; while a mile beyond, the tall, white shaft of a half-ruined lighthouse is visible.

The vessel is a clipper-built bark, her long, tapering masts heavily sparred and spreading a cloud of canvas. The lines of her hull are so fine, her bow is so sharp, and her run so clean moulded that she could evidently show great speed were she not so closely hauled. As it is, although every thread of canvas is drawing, the bowlines are hauled well out and the weather leeches of the topsails shiver as the ship rises and falls on the strong easterly swell; for she is kept almost in the wind’s eye by the old quartermaster at the wheel, under the watchful conning of the officer of the deck.

Near one of the after guns stands an officer looking through his marine glass toward the southward, steadying himself, meanwhile, by leaning against the weather mizzen rigging.

“Well, sir, what do your young eyes make of her?” I queried.

“It is certainly the Connecticut, and she is making the best of her way down the coast, under steam and sail.”

“Just as I thought! Confound it, why couldn’t we have been a couple of hours earlier! Well, Mr. Bailey, it seems pretty certain that we have lost the supply steamer, as we did our blockade runner last night, by being a little too late!”

“That will make it a very dismal Christmas for us, sir.”

“I know it, Mr. Bailey, and I am as much disappointed as you possibly can be. I was anxiously expecting some important private letters by the Connecticut, to say nothing of the necessity of stocking up my mess stores. I fancy that you are not much better off in that respect in the wardroom.”

“Better off, sir! Why we are down to our very last can of tomatoes, and that, with salt beef, is very likely to be our Christmas dinner to-day in the wardroom, with possibly a plum duff as a wind-up. It’s simply awful, sir!”

“I am heartily sorry for you, Mr. Bailey, and I must see if my steward cannot rake up something among my stores to help out your table a bit. I shall expect you and the doctor to dine with me to-day, however. But we must be getting in very close to our anchorage, I think. Yes, there is our buoy just off the lee bow. We shall fetch it nicely on this tack. Call all hands, sir, at once, and bring the ship to an anchor.”

The order was passed, the boatswain’s call rang out sharp and clear, the boatswain’s mates took up the refrain in a minor key, and above the notes of the whistles the hoarse cry, “All hands bring ship to anchor, ahoy!” resounded through the berth deck. Responsive to the call, the quiet ship was soon alive with men hastening to their stations.

“Stand by halyards, sheets, clewlines, and downhauls fore and aft!” shouted the executive officer through his trumpet. “Lower away; let go; clew up, haul down!” There was a whizzing of ropes, a flapping of canvas, and in a moment the yards were down and the sails were hanging in festoons.

“Away, topgallant and royal yard men! Lay aloft, topmen and lower yard men! Trice up booms; lay out; furl!”

A hundred men sprang into the rigging as they were called away; each yard swarmed with them as they rapidly furled the sails; and as the ship lost her headway, the anchor was let go, the crew quickly laid down from aloft, and the beautiful ship that but a few minutes before had been alive under a cloud of canvas was quietly swinging to her anchor, with sails trimly furled, bunts triced up, yards squared by lifts and braces, and no man to be seen above the hammock nettings save the lookout at each masthead and the commanding officer, who from the poop had been critically watching this evolution of “a flying-moor,” and now turned to express his satisfaction to the executive officer, who was turning the trumpet over to the officer of the deck.

“Very neatly done, indeed, Mr. Bailey! We couldn’t have beaten that in the old Richmond with three times our crew! Men who show the result of your excellent training so smartly as this at least deserve a Christmas dinner. Have my gig called away immediately after breakfast, and I will go on shore and see if I cannot knock over a bullock. I don’t believe any of us will object to a bit of roast beef, and I shall be glad to make a little reconnaissance at the same time.”

My predecessor on this station had been Captain Robert Wade, in command of the United States bark Arthur. As she was at Pensacola when I took command of the Anderson, I went on board of her one day to learn something about my new station.

“Well, Kelson,” said Captain Wade in response to my queries, “it is a God-forsaken coast, and I am not sorry to have got away from it myself. You will need to anchor in about ten fathoms, say three miles from shore; for when the northers come along next winter you will very likely have to slip, and then you will require plenty of sea room to work off shore.”

“Any inhabitants about the bay?”

“I never saw any. There are some half-wild cattle on Matagorda Island, and I used to go on shore, occasionally, and shoot one for the messes. It’s a pretty lonely spot, I assure you!”

That was about all that I had been able to learn, in advance, of the stretch of coast I was supposed to take care of; and up to this blessed Christmas Day, now nearly two weeks, no signs whatever of life in the neighborhood of the bay had been discovered, although a bright lookout had been constantly maintained from the mastheads of my ship.

Consequently I felt that I was taking every reasonable precaution when I ordered my boat’s crew to wear their cutlasses, and had half a dozen Sharps’ rifles put in the stern sheets, for I knew that we would be more than a match for any possible bushwhackers, although I had no reason to expect any opposition. My surgeon had gladly accepted an invitation to join me, and soon after breakfast we shoved off from the ship on our quest for beef.

Across the mouth of the bay the breakers made a line of white-capped surf; but acting on instructions I had received from Captain Wade, I watched for a heavy roller, and then we gave way and went in with it, keeping the boat’s stern to the sea, and thus crossed the bar with only a slight drenching.

About a mile, as I remember it, from the bar stood the lighthouse. Early in the war the rebels, in accordance with their general policy, had removed the lantern, and had then attempted to blow up the tower; but the sturdy shaft had defied their efforts, and, barring a ragged gap in one side, it was, as yet, practically intact.

Landing a few rods from the lighthouse, I left the boat beached, with orders to the crew not to stray away and to keep their arms in readiness for use. Then, accompanied by the doctor and my coxswain, I strolled up to the tower, intending to obtain from the top a lookout over the surrounding country.

But this I soon found was no easy task, for the rebels had blown out the lower iron steps from the inside: and it was only by using considerable effort that we at last succeeded in accomplishing our object, and only then after pulling down in the struggle two of the steps still remaining in place. However, at last we scrambled up and made our way to the balcony above the lantern-room.

From this point the view was very extended; and unslinging my marine glass, I, sailor-like, turned first to look at the beautiful picture my noble ship presented gracefully riding at her anchors, her tall masts tapering skyward, the ensign and pennant drooping idly from the peak and masthead in the light air, the guns peering from her side being the only thing to indicate that she was not some “peaceful merchant caravel.”

“She is certainly a beauty, doctor. You don’t often see a prettier craft, and she is as good as she is bonny, and carries a swift pair of heels into the bargain! But what are you looking at over there so intently? It is easy to see that you are not a sailor! Have you got a bullock in range over those hills?”

While speaking I turned my glass in the direction where the doctor was looking so earnestly, and the sight presented almost took away my breath, and for an instant I was speechless.

On our right, over the sheltering sand hill which had heretofore concealed them from our view, was a rebel camp in plain sight, into which, as I looked down from the tower, it seemed to me that I could have cast a stone!

Two score dingy shelter tents and two or three larger marquee tents indicated the presence of at least a hundred men, while before one of the large tents were two brass field-pieces!

There was no perceptible stir in the camp, and for a moment I hoped that we might not have been observed, and that possibly there was yet time for us to escape unnoticed from this trap into which I had so unwittingly cast myself.

But the silence and quiet were delusive; for as I looked again more carefully, I saw that men were stealing over the sand hills toward my boat, which they doubtless hoped to capture by surprise!

We have been told by those who have been revived, after coming well-nigh within the gates of death by drowning, that in the few agonizing moments before they became unconscious, a thousand recollections of the life they were leaving flashed through their minds. So now I recalled Wade’s words when he had told me that this island was uninhabited, and cursed myself for having trusted to them. I thought of the report of the affair Mr. Bailey, soon to be commander in my place, would make to the admiral. What business had I, the captain, out of my ship, when a junior officer could have been sent in to make a reconnaissance, if indeed it were needed at all! And what sad news to be sent home to my young wife, for a Texas prison pen was but a shade better than death!

But I was aroused by the doctor’s question, “Hadn’t we better be getting out of this, captain?” and coming to a realizing sense of the necessity for immediate action, I made quick time in getting down to the ground.

The boat’s crew were amusing themselves by shying stones at a bottle they had set up for a mark, in utter unconsciousness of their imminent danger, and they were evidently greatly surprised at the rapid manner with which we came down to the boat.

“Into the boat at once, men!” I cried, “and give way for your lives! The rebs are almost on top of us!”

The doctor and I climbed into the stern sheets as the men sprang into their places; and as they bent to their oars, the rebels, seeing that they were discovered, poured over the sand hills with exultant yells. Fortunately we got the boat well in motion before they opened fire, and their shots flew wild, save one that buried itself in the stern of the boat close to the rudder head.

“They are bringing the fieldpiece over the hill, captain!” said the doctor, who was watching the enemy.

“Give way, lads! Make her jump, if you don’t want to sleep in prison to-night!” I shouted, keeping the boat as close over to the port shore as it was possible without fouling the oars.

Bang! and a shell came shrieking through the air so close to our heads that, as it burst, a fragment cut a slice out of the starboard gunwale of the boat, between the stern sheets and the after oar. At the same time the stroke oarsman was wounded in the left arm by another bit of shell. But the brave fellow did not abandon his oar or lose his stroke; and the doctor, tearing a piece from his own shirt sleeve, bound it about the wounded arm and stanched the blood, without moving the man from his seat.

“They are waving us to come in, captain,” said the doctor, as he finished binding up the man’s arm and took a look astern.

“Well, we won’t oblige them,” I replied. “Give them a sight of our ensign, doctor, so that they may know for certain who we are. It will not be the first time they have fired on that flag!”

The doctor reached behind me, as I steered, and placed the staff of the boat flag in its socket, and “Old Glory” streamed out behind us as we flew through the water.

This brought another shell, which passed close astern of the boat, missing us by so little that we all held our breath as it came screaming toward us. But we, meanwhile, were not tarrying. Our light boat was dashing along, and her speed evidently disconcerted the hurried aim of our adversaries, whose next shots were wide of the mark, although quite near enough to make their singing very unpleasant music.

But another and an entirely unexpected danger now confronted us; for as we neared the lower point of the bay, where we expected to be out of range, men were seen launching from the beach a boat somewhat larger than our own, with the evident purpose of cutting us off before we could reach the bar.

Under ordinary circumstances, or single-handed, I should not have objected to this prospective contest, for I felt very sure that, boat for boat, we should be more than a match for them; but if we stopped to fight, the artillerymen, who were now dragging their pieces down the beach, would get us in range, and a single well-directed shot from the gun would easily have put us hors de combat. So that I viewed this new complication as very far from being an agreeable incident.

But before the soldiers got their boat afloat, which they were going about in a very lubberly manner, we were startled by the report of a heavy gun from outside, and a rifle shell came hurtling high above our heads and landed in the sand very near our pursuers. A second shot followed almost immediately, which to our delight exploded in the very midst of the men, capsizing the piece and dispersing the gunners in a very summary manner!

“Hurrah! doctor, the Anderson is talking back! There she is, God bless her!” and as I spoke the dear old barkey appeared in plain sight under topsails, courses, and jibs, right abreast of the entrance to the bay, and much closer in to the bar than she had any business to be, and the Parrott rifle rang out again, landing a shell in such very close proximity to the party who were getting the boat afloat that they at once abandoned their work.

“Give way now, boys; we’ll go through the breakers if we have to go through bottom side up! Our friends will pick us up.” And we dashed into the surf. The boat rose almost on end, then came down and touched bottom, but at the same instant another roller lifted her, the men bent to their oars sturdily, and in a minute more we were through the surf and safe in the quiet water outside the bar.

As we emerged from the rollers the Anderson luffed up in the wind, her main topsail was braced aback, and the crew sprang into the rigging and gave three hearty cheers, which must have been very depressing to our would-be captors.

We were received on board with a warm greeting that set all discipline at defiance for a few minutes, and then the usual calm routine of a well-disciplined ship of war settled down, and all excitement was repressed as we hoisted in the gig and made sail on the other tack for our anchorage.

My honest steward’s welcome, when I went down to my cabin, was none the less hearty because in failing to bring off the coveted bullock I had compelled him to serve me a very meagre dinner; and as I sat down to the simple meal he had provided, I could not but be grateful for my very narrow escape from taking my Christmas dinner that day in a Texas prison pen!

CHAPTER VII
A SUCCESSFUL STILL HUNT

About three months after my adventure in the bay, the doctor came to me one morning after quarters and reported that he had a number of cases on the sick list of a decidedly scorbutic character. This, he said, was mainly the result of a lack of fresh vegetables in the messes, as we had been neglected by the supply steamers for a long time. Since my late experience, I had made no further attempts at obtaining fresh beef on shore, so had come down to a salt-beef ration.

The doctor said that it would be necessary to have a change in the dietary to check the progress of this disease, and he submitted his report for my consideration.

Although my orders from Commodore Bell contemplated my keeping a close blockade of Aransas, I had received, in view of the extent of coast I was expected to care for, permission to exercise a certain amount of discretion, which I felt assured would warrant me in running down to the Rio Grande under the existing circumstances.

That was the southern limit of the Texan coast, about one hundred and seventy-five miles from Aransas, and was included in my beat, as the Anderson was the only ship on the blockade between Galveston and Matamoras.

When I notified Mr. Bailey of my intention and gave orders for getting under weigh at daylight the following morning, my executive officer did not attempt to conceal his pleasure at the prospect of a change from the deadly monotony of the blockade; and I observed that evening, as I took my after-dinner exercise on the poop, that the songs from the forecastle displayed an unusual amount of vigor in the choruses. Indeed, I had never heard “Dick Turpin’s Ride to York” go off with such vim, and the chorus,—

“My bonny, my bonny, my bonny Black Bess,”

could almost have been heard on the sand hills, three miles away, that sheltered our Confederate friends, the Texan Rangers.

The next morning we were off bright and early with a fresh breeze from the northward, and the following day we dropped our anchor just north of the imaginary line that divided Mexican from American waters. In fact, I was so close to this boundary line that, although I laid my anchor on American bottom, when the wind was from the northward my ship swung into Mexican water. By treaty this line, starting from the centre of the mouth of the Rio Grande, runs out three miles W. N. W. I mention this particularly, as its importance in my story will be discovered farther on.

My anchorage was well outside of the fleet in the harbor, which to my surprise included a number of large merchant steamers flying the English flag, all of them busily engaged in loading or unloading; and all of them, as I observed, were well to the southward of the line, and consequently in Mexican waters.

Our anchors down, sails furled, and yards squared, I had my gig called away, and pulled in shore to an American ship of war with whom I had exchanged signals and which I had thus learned was the United States steamer Princess Royal, a captured English blockade runner purchased by our government at the prize sale and fitted out as a vessel of war. She was commanded by Commander George Colvocoresses, a regular officer, a Greek by birth, and called by the sailors, who could not grapple with this Hellenic appellation, “Old Crawl-over-the-crosstrees.”

After reporting and explaining my errand at the Rio Grande, I expressed my astonishment at the activity that was manifest on every side in the harbor.

“Yes,” said the captain, “I have had the pleasure of seeing small vessels come in here almost every day loaded with Texan cotton, which they have quietly discharged in lighters, and those ships have brought cargoes of arms and ammunition from England which they sell at excellent prices to the Confederate agents ashore, and after they have discharged they will load up with cotton for Liverpool.”

“What becomes of the war material?”

“Oh, it is all smuggled across the river, a little farther up from the coast, into Texas. Those guns you can now see being hoisted out will be in the hands of the Confederates within the next sixty days.”

“And can nothing be done about it?”

“Absolutely nothing. I have protested with the authorities, and they assure me that nothing contraband of war shall be permitted to cross the river into Texas. But the under customs officers are easily bribed, and they become conveniently blind.”

Returning to the Anderson, I pulled near the discharging ships, and I could readily see that they were, as the captain had said, hoisting out munitions of war, with no attempt at concealment. Of course, as they were ships of a neutral power in Mexican waters, we, as United States officers, were helpless in preventing this traffic, which was of such great benefit to the Confederates and which kept their trans-Mississippi armies so admirably equipped.

On going ashore the next day to arrange for supplies, I found the streets of Matamoras swarming with Confederate officers, who made themselves offensive to us in many ways. So I did not endeavor to prolong my stay at the Rio Grande, but pushed things along, laid in a generous supply of fresh fruits and vegetables, filled our water tanks, and was ready for sea again within a week. Then one afternoon I went on board the Princess Royal to make my farewell call on Captain Colvocoresses, and returning to my ship, was about getting under weigh, when, taking a look seaward, I saw a schooner standing in for the harbor from the eastward.

Mr. Bailey, who was looking at her intently with his glass, exclaimed: “Captain, she is full of cotton and carrying a large deck load. She is a blockade runner, sure!”

A glance through my own glass verified the correctness of his report.

“By George, Mr. Bailey, we’ll have a try for her!”

“I am afraid it is no use, captain. She is too near the line; before we can get under weigh she will be in Mexican water, where she can laugh at us.”

“Yes, if she finds out who we are. Let us see if we can’t outwit her. I don’t believe she has noticed us yet, and she is well to the eastward of the line yet. Quietly brace our yards awry; cock-bill the main yard a bit; haul down that pennant and ensign; run in our guns and close the ports; slack up the running rigging; throw an old sail over the port gangway as though we had been taking in cargo there; get up a burton on the mainstay and a whip on the main yard; send all hands below. In short, turn the old ship into a merchantman for the time being, to throw the schooner off the scent. If we succeed in doing that, I will guarantee that we bag her.”

Mr. Bailey hurried away to have this work done, and I sent my orderly to ask Mr. Taylor to come into the cabin.

I explained my plan to him, and told him to man and arm the second cutter and to drop her under the starboard quarter, where she could not be seen from the approaching schooner, and to be ready at a word from me to dash upon the prize. I knew that I could depend upon this officer for an intelligent and prompt performance of his share of the work, and I told him the instant he got on board the schooner to heave her to on the other tack and at once take the bearing of the mouth of the river so carefully that he could swear to the vessel’s position, if the matter should come up in the prize court for adjudication.

Then I replaced my uniform coat and cap with a white linen jacket and a straw hat, and took up a conspicuous position on the poop, looking very like a merchant captain. Meanwhile Mr. Bailey, following my suggestions, had transformed my dandy man-of-war bark into a merchant drogher, to all appearance from a short distance. He had also got himself up in the masquerade costume of a Kennebunk mate, and in his shirt sleeves was lounging over the midship rail, cigar in mouth, watching the approach of our Confederate friend, who was standing in for the anchorage evidently entirely unconscious of any lurking danger.

The greatest difficulty I experienced was in keeping my men out of sight. They were as full of excitement as a cat watching for a mouse, and would endeavor to steal up the hatchways for a peep at the schooner, notwithstanding all the vigilance of their officers.

At last the schooner was within little more than a cable’s length of our port quarter, and her crew were standing by to shorten sail, in anticipation of anchoring, when I quietly walked across the poop and gave Mr. Taylor the word.

Like a tiger springing upon his prey, the boat flew through the water, was alongside the schooner, and Mr. Taylor was at the tiller, which he put hard down, to the utter astonishment of the steersman.

The boat’s crew were already in possession, the schooner, was luffed up in the wind, close under my quarter, a line was thrown to her, her sails came down by the run, and she was our prize without striking a blow and almost without a word being uttered!

The captain of the vessel had not fully recovered from his astonishment when he was brought on board my ship. From him I learned that she was the America, with one hundred and eleven bales of cotton, with which she had run out of Laredo a few days before. Casting a glance about my decks, now filled with men, he muttered: “Well you ’uns certainly tricked me that time! This must be that infernal Yankee bark they told me was off Aransas Pass!”

As I did not deem it advisable to remain longer in port after my capture, although it was undoubtedly made in American waters, I got my ship under weigh at once, and within thirty minutes we were standing out to sea with the schooner in tow, and the whole affair had passed off so quietly that I doubt if a vessel in port was aware that anything out of the common order had taken place.

I sent the America to Key West with a prize crew, and the following evening I was back at my old anchorage off Aransas with an abundance of fresh provisions and mess stores and enjoying the comfortable feeling that comes of outwitting an adversary.

CHAPTER VIII
CATCHING A TARTAR

But the good fortune that had thus far fallen to the lot of the Anderson was to take a turn, for we had not long returned to our station at Aransas when an affair occurred that was a decided damper upon the fun we had heretofore enjoyed in capturing prizes.

One morning while the watch was washing down the decks the lookout at the masthead gave the always welcome “Sail ho!” and upon closer inspection the vessel in sight proved to be a small sloop hugging the shore to the northward and evidently running down the coast on her way to the Rio Grande.

Of course we slipped our anchors at once and made sail in chase; but the wind was light and the sloop was of such light draft that, having a leading wind, she could safely keep almost in to the surf line, where we could not possibly get at her with the ship. In consequence, the sloop was rapidly approaching the entrance to Aransas Bay, where she would easily have escaped us, when I resorted to my former expedient and sent in an armed cutter, with a light gun, to head her off, knowing that if I could get her off shore I should eventually capture her.

But when the captain of the sloop saw what I was up to, he put his helm up, without hesitation, let draw his sheets, and drove his vessel through the light surf and high up on the beach. Then the crew at once abandoned the craft, and, running up over the sand hills, disappeared.

The officer in my boat, following sharp upon his chase, ran alongside the sloop, of which he took possession, and found her loaded with between forty and fifty bales of cotton. But, unfortunately, she had been beached at the very tiptop of high water; and as the tide soon after began to run ebb, it was very evident to Mr. Allen that his prize would soon be high and dry, so he returned to the ship for further orders.

That evening at high water I sent in three armed boats, with orders for one of them to lay outside the breakers and cover the landing party. The crews of the other two boats, under command of my executive officer, were directed to make every effort to get the sloop afloat, and for that purpose they were amply provided with hawsers, blocks and tackles, a kedge anchor, and such other paraphernalia as I deemed necessary for the proposed work.

The wind was light and there was a full moon, so that the conditions were very favorable for success. Mr. Bailey laid out the sloop’s anchor, backed with our kedge, brought the hawser to the sloop’s windlass, reinforced it with a heavy purchase, and got a heavy strain on the hawser with the aid of his twoscore men, who were working with all their heart, but not an inch would she budge. Her skipper had driven her up with all sail set, and she had made a bed for herself in the soft sand from which we could not possibly move her.

When the tide began to run ebb, Mr. Bailey decided to return to the ship and report progress—or rather the lack of it. I had been anxiously watching the operations from the ship, which I had anchored as near the beach as prudence permitted, and I was naturally annoyed at the want of success on the part of my people.

I presume my manner gave Mr. Bailey the impression that I attributed the failure to his insufficient effort, which was by no means the case, but I saw that he was very much dejected as he made his report.

The officers talked the matter over together in the wardroom that evening, as I learned later on, and the next morning Mr. Taylor, who was my favorite boat officer, came to me after quarters and asked, as a special favor, permission to go in with three picked boat’s crews that morning and, abandoning what seemed a well-nigh useless attempt to get the sloop afloat, to unload her and tow the cotton, worth twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars, off to the ship.

“I’ll guarantee to do it, captain,” said the plucky fellow. “I propose to take in two or three coils of inch rope in the boats and after getting the bales afloat I can lash them together so that we can tow them off to the ship in this smooth water with our three boats.”

“It will be very hard work, Mr. Taylor, even if you get the bales afloat through the surf, which is doubtful. And I don’t feel clear in my mind that it would be strictly in the line of duty. The sloop is ashore, and her blockade running can be put an end to for good and all by a match and a few pounds of powder, or we can knock her to pieces from the ship in target practice. Our men had a hard day’s work yesterday for nothing, and I don’t care to give them more of it.”

“I know that, sir; but the crew are just crazy to do it. I should only take volunteers, and there are twice as many ready to go as I require for the work.”

I saw that officers and men were alike anxious for the lark, as they considered it; they were always ready when I called upon them for the severest duty, and so against my better judgment I gave way and consented. But I insisted that the first cutter, well armed, should remain outside the surf to cover the shore operations, and that under no circumstances should she be taken off from guard duty. By this precaution alone I was saved from what would have otherwise been a very serious disaster.

Most of the forenoon was passed by the shore party in breaking out the bales and in warping them out to one of the boats outside the surf, and by noon nearly all the cotton was afloat. Just before twelve o’clock I was about giving the order to make the boat recall signal, for the men to come off to dinner, when I saw a series of puffs of smoke from the sand hills and heard the muffled reports of musketry. In a moment there was a rush of gray-coats toward my men, a rapid return fire from my guard boat, a struggle on the beach, plainly visible through the glass, two or three figures lay prone on the sand, and then the heads of men could be seen swimming from the beach out to the boat. One of the cutters was meanwhile launched and forced out through the surf, the rebels keeping up an active fire at it, and then all was quiet, with two boats pulling out toward us and a group of rebels gathered about my whaleboat on the beach!

All this had not taken much longer in the action than it has in the telling, and we on board ship were so utterly surprised at the sudden attack, that for a moment we looked on in speechless amazement! But only for a moment, for the boatswain’s call was not needed to bring all hands on deck, and the orders that rang out sharp and swift were obeyed with equal promptness.

“Aloft, topmen and lower yard men, and loose topsails and courses! Stand by to sheet home and hoist of all! Stand by to slip the anchor! Forecastle there; clear away the rifle and get a range on those fellows! Be careful, Mr. Allen, and give the gun elevation enough to clear our boats!”

The sails fell from the yards and flew to the mastheads, the courses were sheeted home and the tacks ridden down, the jibs ran up, our anchors were slipped, and filling on the starboard tack we stood in for the land, the forecastle gun, actively served, throwing shells among the rebels, who were taking shelter behind the sand hills.

“Put a leadsman in the fore chains, sir! Give me the soundings sharp, my lad!”

“And a quarter five,” came the quick response.

We were drawing sixteen feet, and that left but fifteen feet of water under my keel. I certainly could not go much farther in.

“Get another cast, and be quick about it!”

“Qu-a-a-r-ter less five!”

“Stand by to tack ship! Put your helm down!”

“And a h-a-l-f four!”

“Hard a lee! Tacks and sheets! Mainsail haul!”

The dear old barkey came up in the wind like a bird, lost her headway, paused, trembling, for a moment, and then filled on the other tack as the head yards flew round. We began to edge off shore again, while the call from the leadsman, “Quarter less four,” warned me that we had got on the other tack none too soon.

Out of danger with my ship, I could now turn my attention to the situation in shore, where I found two of my boats well off to me and the beach clear of the combatants, who did not care to face my fire; but my white whaleboat had been run up inside of the sloop, and was temporarily abandoned.

The two boats were soon alongside, and I learned, to my sorrow, that six men of the whaleboat crew were prisoners on shore and two of the second cutter’s crew had been wounded in escaping. The abandoned cotton was meanwhile floating about in the breakers, a disagreeable reminder of the cause of our discomfiture.

Mr. Taylor reported that when the rebels opened fire and made a rush for them, two of our boats were beached. The crew of the cutter ran their boat out and got her beyond the breakers under a heavy fire with only two wounded; but the crew of the lighter boat were less fortunate, and were headed off by the rebels, and six of them were compelled to surrender at discretion. Several of the Confederates were wounded by the fire from our guard boat, and Mr. Taylor thought that two of them were killed.

The next day I sent in a flag of truce boat to Colonel Hobbie, in command of the Confederates, and endeavored to effect an exchange of my men for several rebel prisoners I had on board; but failing in that attempt, I sent my boys their clothing and a liberal supply of tobacco. All of this, however, as I learned, was confiscated by the rebels, and none of their property ever came into the hands of my men.

The following day I found that my whaleboat had been taken away during the previous night, so I went to quarters for target practice and speedily knocked the sloop into kindling wood with our broadside battery,—as I should have done at first,—and so brought that episode to a close.

Six months later, while the Anderson was at New Orleans, Harry Benson, the coxswain of my whaleboat, who was one of those captured, came off to the ship and reported for duty. He had escaped from the prison pen at Matagorda wearing an old Confederate uniform he had managed to purchase, and had actually walked, nearly six hundred miles, through Texas to New Orleans!

CHAPTER IX
THE NAVAL TRAITOR

The following spring the commodore ordered the Anderson to New Orleans to refit, and while there an official letter came to me from the Navy Department detaching me from the West Gulf Squadron and granting me two months’ leave of absence, with orders to report at the expiration of that time to the officer commanding at Cairo, Illinois, for service in the Mississippi Squadron, which was then under the command of Rear Admiral David D. Porter.

On inquiry I found that I was one of the half dozen officers selected as a contingent from the West Gulf Squadron to be placed in command of Porter’s fleet of river steamers, which had been transformed into vessels of war.

As the fighting was all over in our department since the capture of Mobile, and as there was a decided novelty in the river fleet, I did not object to this transfer, more particularly as a furlough was the agreeable accompaniment of the change.

So I went home, and of course thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the first leave of absence I had obtained for more than three years. I found my only little baby, whom I had never seen, grown into quite a child of two and a half years, who would scarcely come to the stranger in uniform she had never seen, who called her daughter. And there were other family changes, some of them very sad ones, but in those busy war-days we had little time for sentiment.

Like everything else in this world, my two months’ furlough soon passed, and I bade everyone good-by, and took the train for Cairo. And a vile hole it was in the early spring of 1864, the streets flooded and almost impassable and the wretched hotels filled with soldiers, gamblers, and the ruck that always hang about the skirts of an army.

When I reported to Commodore Pennock, he was kind enough to say that he wanted me with him at the Naval Station at Mound City, a few miles above Cairo, and so I moved out there and was acting as executive officer of the Navy Yard, as we called it, when the rebel General N. B. Forrest, in April, made his famous—or infamous—assault on Fort Pillow, a few miles below us, carrying it by storm and massacring a large number of the colored troops who were defending the work.

The mangled survivors of this affair were brought at once up to our naval hospital at Mound City, and we improvised beds as best we could for their accommodation. General Forrest is still living, I believe, and I understand that he denies that any extraordinary cruelty was manifested by his conquering troops. But I speak from my own observation; and although it is now thirty years ago, the recollection of the horrors we saw among those poor mangled negroes is still fresh in my mind, as are the stories of the dying that were poured into our ears.

It was a brutal, cowardly massacre, pure and simple, and no amount of attempted explanation can make it anything else. It was only one sad episode of a cruel war, but it was an episode worthy of Alva, “the Spanish Butcher.”

To convict the man, it is only necessary to read his original dispatch to the Confederate government, which fortunately is still preserved as a double evidence of his brutality and his illiteracy. It reads: “We busted the fort at ninerclock and scatered the niggers. The men is still a cillenem [killing them] in the woods. Them as was cotch with spoons and brestpins and sich was cilled and the rest was payrolled and told to git.”

Not long after this event, Commodore Pennock sent for me, one day, and handed me my orders to the command of the ironclad Benton, then at anchor off Natchez, and suggested that I had better take the first steamer from Cairo down to my new ship.

In a way this was a piece of good fortune. The Benton had been at different times the flagship of both Admirals C. W. Davis and David D. Porter, and she was the largest vessel on the river and carried the heaviest armament. The trouble was that she was a very slow ship, and against the strong Mississippi current, going up stream she could scarcely make four knots an hour.

However, she had spacious quarters for her commanding officer, albeit they were directly over the boilers; and she was the division flagship, which carried a certain distinction; while if she ever should get into a fight again she had the weight of metal to make her a very formidable opponent. So I packed my traps and was soon steaming down the river on the fine passenger steamer Olive for my new command.

---

The torrid heat of a waning July day was being tempered by the delicious evening breeze that was blowing up the Mississippi River as I sat aft on the berth deck of my ship smoking a post-prandial cigar in one of the ports and trying to make up my mind to get into my evening togs and go on shore to make a long-postponed call. I had now been several months in command of the Benton, and on the whole they had not been unpleasant nor altogether unprofitable months.

The navy was just then very busily engaged in keeping up a close patrol of the river to prevent the Confederate trans-Mississippi army in Arkansas, under the command of General Dick Taylor and Prince Polignac, from crossing over the river and effecting a junction with General Joe Johnston, which they were very desirous of accomplishing.

Cooped up where they were, these twenty-five thousand Confederates, with an abundance of military stores obtained from English ships at the mouth of the Rio Grande, did no particular harm; but let them get on the other side of the river and they would make a very material difference in the comfort of Sherman, who was then starting on his famous march through Georgia.

The navy was expected to prevent this passage of the river by keeping up an incessant patrol day and night, and thus a crossing of the army in force was an impossibility. We were constantly capturing rebel deserters, or stray couriers with letters from the Confederate leaders to Johnston; and occasionally, no doubt, some escaped us, but not many of them, I imagine.

I wish to emphasize the vital importance to us of keeping this patrol effective, and the great value it would be to the rebels to break it, as this has an important bearing upon the incident I am about to relate.

The ship stationed next above me had been the light-armored (we called them tin-clad) steamer—Brilliant I will call her, although that was not her name. She was commanded by Acting Master Daniel Glenny, a native of Connecticut, a bright, active young officer, an excellent seaman, and a man who had always impressed me favorably.

As I was his senior officer and for the time commanding the division, Glenny always came on board the Benton to report when our ships met, which was almost daily, and I had often had him at dinner with me, and had come to know him intimately. A few weeks before this evening he had been ordered to a beat thirty miles farther up the river, not far from Skipwith’s Landing, and consequently I had not seen him for perhaps a month.

As I sat in the port smoking and dreaming of home, my orderly came up and said the officer of the deck reported that a tug was steaming up the river, and that she had signaled, “I wish to communicate.”

I at once went on deck, and by that time the tug was within hail.

“Tug ahoy!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“What tug is that? Don’t come any nearer at present!”

“This is the Rover, sir. I have special orders for you from Commodore Morris from New Orleans.”

“Very well; steam up under my quarter and come on board!”

The tug came near, and as she touched our overhang we lowered a side ladder, and an officer in uniform came on board and handed me an official document.

I went down to my cabin, opened the letter, and read:—

A. V. Lieut. Robert Kelson, Commanding U. S. S. Benton:

Sir,—Upon the receipt of this order you will at once detach your executive officer and order him to proceed immediately, without any delay, in the tug Rover up the river to the U. S. S. Brilliant, where he will take command of that vessel, putting her commanding officer, Acting Master Daniel Glenny, in close confinement.

When this duty is accomplished send the Rover back to me here.

Very Respt’y,

Yr. Obt. Servant,

(Signed) Henry W. Morris,

Commodore Commanding West Gulf Squadron.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish! And what did it all mean? I touched my bell. “Orderly, send the captain of the Rover down here to me.”

The ensign in command of the tug came down to my cabin. “Captain,” said I, “do you know what duty you are on?”

“No, sir; except that I was to give you a letter and then follow your instructions.”

“You have no idea of the contents of this letter?”

“I haven’t the least idea, sir.”

“Very well, I shall send an officer up the river with you to-night to the Brilliant. You will find her not far below Skipwith’s, I fancy. Go on board your tug, sir, and be all ready to proceed up the river within an hour.”

The officer bowed and retired. Then I sent for my executive, Mr. Willetts, feeling as though I were in a dream. He was a plain, straightforward man with no more imagination in his composition than a boarding pike. When I read the commodore’s orders to him, he merely said, “Shall I put Captain Glenny in irons, sir?”

I had never thought of that unpleasant detail in the affair, and could have beaten Willetts for the suggestion.

“The commodore says ‘close confinement,’ sir,” he added.

“Yes, Mr. Willetts; but I think confinement to his stateroom, with possibly a sentry on the guards and another at the door of his room, will be near enough to close confinement until we get further orders. I can see nothing in this dispatch to warrant me in subjecting an officer to the indignity of irons.”

So I packed Willetts off within the hour and turned in for a sleepless night in my berth, with the problem running through my brain, “What on earth has Glenny been doing to get him into this scrape?”

---

Three evenings after that eventful night a vessel was seen steaming down the river showing the Brilliant’s night signal. She passed us, rounded to astern of the Benton, and then steamed up within hailing distance.

“Benton ahoy!” came the hail in Willetts’ familiar voice. “I wish to communicate, sir. Can I come alongside?”

“Very well; come on board yourself.”

I heard the captain’s gig called away, and in a few minutes Willetts, looking as pale as a ghost, stood in my cabin.

“Captain Kelson,”—he stammered.

“What has happened to you, sir?” I queried, for the man’s manner warned me that something was wrong.

“Captain Glenny escaped last night, sir!” he said, as he sank into a chair.

“Escaped!”

And then he told me as much of the story as he knew, which was later supplemented, bit by bit, from different sources.

Three months before, Glenny had made the acquaintance of a Miss ——, a very bright, dashing girl, devoted to the cause of the Confederacy and willing, as she often boasted, to sacrifice anything but her honor for her country. She lived near the river, within Glenny’s beat, and she soon discovered that he was attracted by her beauty, which was very striking, and it was not long until she had made him her willing and abject slave, body and soul.

Of the details of the affair we could learn little except that she came on board the Brilliant almost daily and Glenny visited her very frequently on shore. But this we did discover: that for love of this girl the young officer at last became a traitor and actually entered into a compact with the rebel officer commanding on shore to deliver up his ship to the Confederates.

The consideration for this treachery was to be a major’s commission in their army, a hundred bales of cotton, and one hundred thousand dollars in gold, while, as it was understood, the girl promised to marry Glenny when the deed was accomplished.

A plan was arranged by which a body of the Brilliant’s crew was to be given liberty on shore to go to a negro ball on a certain night, when the Confederates were to come off in boats in large numbers and take possession of the steamer, Glenny making a mere nominal resistance.

The sailors were duly sent on shore to the dance; but through a suspicion on the part of a vigilant junior officer of the Brilliant, the consummation of the plot was thwarted and the attempted surprise failed.

Meanwhile, news of the proposed plan was carried down to New Orleans by a deserter from Dick Taylor’s corps, and it came to Commodore Morris, who took prompt action by sending to me to place Glenny under arrest.

Mr. Willetts told me that he obeyed my orders by placing Captain Glenny under close arrest, and had stationed a sentry at the door of his stateroom and another at the window, which opened on the guards. The first night, however, at midnight, Glenny quietly got up, dressed himself, and, looking out of the window, said in a calm voice to the sentry, “Take this pitcher to the scuttle butt and bring me some cool water!”

With the instinctive impulse of obedience to a commanding officer, the man at once obeyed and went for the water, without a second thought.

During his absence Glenny crawled out of the window to the guards and lowered himself down by a rope into a small fishing-canoe they had towing alongside. He then cut the painter, and in a moment he had dropped astern in the swift current and vanished in the darkness!

We never saw Glenny again, but I heard of him a couple of years later from a Texan who had met him, under another name, in the Confederacy at about the time of Lee’s surrender.

One thing is very sure: had the rebels succeeded in getting possession of the Brilliant, as they planned, and had obtained her signal book from Glenny, they could have filled her with armed men, steamed down to the Benton, made their night number and ran alongside of us without exciting suspicion, and, pouring a large body of men on my decks, could have captured my ship almost without a struggle.

Then, under cover of the Benton, the trans-Mississippi army could readily have crossed the river; and with such a body of fresh, well-armed men in his rear, Sherman might never have reached the seaboard. Slighter chances than this have changed the course of mighty campaigns, as all know who have read history.

In conclusion, I wish to say that this incident is veritable truth, entirely uncolored, and a bit of unwritten history of the only naval traitor of the great Civil War.

CHAPTER X
HUNTING FOR BUSHWHACKERS

Early in September, 1864, after Admiral Porter had been transferred to the North Atlantic Squadron, I was ordered from the Benton to the command of the United States steamer Tyler, relieving Lieutenant Commander Edward Pritchett, who, in command of the Tyler, had also been in charge of the White River division of the Mississippi Squadron.

The Tyler, like the Benton, was a ship with a history. She was one of the two steamers that had performed such excellent service at the battle of Pittsburg Landing; and the navy claimed that those two boats really saved the day on the 6th of April, by keeping a large body of Albert Sidney Johnston’s army in check and covering our disorganized troops that had been driven down to the bank of the river. By thus preventing the rebel attack until the next day, Buell was enabled to effect a junction with Grant, and then turn what had been a check to our arms into a decided victory for the Union. It is quite certain that Grant in his dispatches spoke in very high terms of the service rendered by the gunboats on that occasion.

The Tyler was a large high-pressure wooden steamer, entirely unarmored, her wheels unusually far aft, and with two very tall smokestacks. In fitting her for the naval service she had been divested of all her upper or “hurricane deck” and “texas,” thus giving her a flush spar deck three quarters of her length, with a spacious poop deck, raised some six feet, which afforded comfortable cabins for the commander.

She mounted ten 8-inch guns of sixty-three hundredweight on the berth deck, a 30-pound Parrott rifle on the forecastle, and two brass 12-pounders on the poop. This was a very formidable battery for a river steamer; and as she was very high out of the water, when the river was at a good stage her guns commanded the low banks and could sweep the level country for a great distance.

Captain Pritchett was a very vigilant and active young officer, and he kept the Tyler in a high state of efficiency, and nearly always in motion, so that she had earned from the Confederates the name of the “Black Devil,” from her color and her apparent ubiquity.

Late in October, 1864, Major-General E. R. S. Canby, who was at the time in command of the military division of the West Mississippi, with headquarters at New Orleans, came up to White River on the passenger steamer General Lyon on a tour of inspection of our army in Arkansas. Brigadier-General Maginnis was in command of ten thousand United States troops encamped at the mouth of White River.

This point was also my headquarters with the Tyler; and as I happened to be there at the time, I made an official call upon General Canby, which he returned, and he afterward dined with me on board my ship.

In this way I came to know that a movement of our army up the White River in force was contemplated, with a view of flanking General Dick Taylor and thus retrieving, if possible, the laurels lost in the unfortunate campaign up the Atchafalaya earlier in the season.

General Canby, was very anxious to make a personal reconnaissance of the White River. So, at his request, I dispatched the Hastings up the river with the general and his staff on the morning of November 3, that he might obtain a clear idea of the proposed field of operations.

All went well with the expedition until the following day, when, in passing close in to the bank at a bend in the river, a concealed guerrilla fired at the general, who was seated on a camp-stool on the upper deck of the boat, and wounded him very severely in the thigh.

Our steamer at once opened fire upon the bushwhacker, but he escaped into the adjoining woods, evidently uninjured. As the general was found to be suffering severely from his wound and the surgeon was unable to extract the ball, Captain Rogers very properly decided to return at once to White River station.

Upon the arrival of the Hastings a consultation of army surgeons was held on board, and it was their unanimous opinion that the general could not be moved with safety, and that he must be sent down to New Orleans at once.

Accordingly General Maginnis came to me and expressed an earnest desire to have the Hastings sent down the river.

This was clearly beyond my authority, as the limits of our division only extended to Natchez, and from there to New Orleans the river was in charge of vessels of another squadron. But realizing the exigency, I first obtained an official requisition from General Maginnis, and then, severing the red tape, sent the Hastings off with the sorely wounded officer on my own responsibility.

After several months General Canby recovered and wrote me a very charming note from New Orleans acknowledging what he was pleased to call my courtesy, and in due time the Navy Department, with much less warmth, also acknowledged my official report of what I had done and condoned my unwarranted assumption of authority in consideration of the circumstances. So every one was satisfied excepting Captain Rogers. That gentleman, however, seemed to feel himself personally aggrieved in having had his steamer bushwhacked, and nothing would satisfy him but an attempt at retaliation.

A Union scout, who had been on a mission up the White River lately, came into our camp, and from him we learned that the cowardly shot that wounded General Canby had been fired by a man named Kane, who lived near by the point where he had bushwhacked our steamer. Graves said that Kane boasted of having shot the general, and the scout informed us that his house was the headquarters for all the guerrillas of the neighborhood, who were but little better than robbers, as they were largely Confederate deserters, and preyed upon their own people as well as upon the “Yanks,” as we were called.

After talking the matter over with Rogers and Graves, I consented to join in an effort to capture Kane and his gang, and I detailed my executive officer, Mr. Wilson, with fifty men to accompany me with Captain Rogers in the raid.

As there was no moon, we decided to make the attempt at once; and as we wished to reach Kane’s house late at night, we started at a very early hour in the morning, no information of the projected raid being given out, as such news had a way of traveling overland to the Confederates in a most unaccountable manner.

In fact it was announced carelessly on shore that the Hastings was going up to Cairo for repairs, so when she was missed the next morning it was assumed that she had gone there.

We steamed very quietly up the White River to a point where a bayou made in to the stream, some dozen miles below Kane’s plantation, and, turning the boat, backed her up the bayou about a mile to a bend where she was completely concealed by the overhanging cottonwood trees, draped with their long pendants of moss.

Here we waited for night. At eleven o’clock we cast off from the bank and steamed down the bayou and into the main river, which we ascended with great caution, literally feeling our way, until Graves assured me that we were but a scant mile below Kane’s house. We then ran in to the bank and, securing the boat to the trunk of a great tree, landed our shore party, which altogether numbered one hundred and ten officers and men.

We took up the line of march, Graves ahead, Rogers and I following closely, as indeed was very necessary in the darkness, and the men coming after us in double file and in as close order as was practicable.

The road was abominable, a mere cowpath, in many places grown up and almost impassable, and shortly after leaving the steamer we were compelled to cross a run where the water was knee-deep; but at last we came in sight of the house, a long, low, story and a half structure, part log, part frame, surrounded on two sides by a broad porch. At a short distance and near the woods, which on that side came quite close to the home buildings, were three wretched cabins or negro quarters, a half-ruined ginhouse, a smokehouse, two very large corn cribs, and a high-roofed barn.

No lights were visible, and as it was past midnight it was probable that all the inmates of the house were asleep. Of course it was necessary to surround the house closely, to avoid the escape of our quarry; but the danger in that operation lay in arousing the dogs, always so numerous and so watchful on a Southern plantation, and thus giving the alarm.

Graves suggested to me in a whisper that he and Captain Rogers had better take one portion of the men and, after falling back some little distance, make a détour, so that they could approach the house from the rear and farther side, while I should remain where I was and guard the front and near side.

“When you hear an owl hoot three times and after a pause hoot once, you may know that we are in position and ready to close in. I will then wait five minutes and repeat the same signal. When you hear it, captain, close in with your party, side and front, and we will have them trapped, sure.”

I deferred to Graves’s suggestions, as he was quite a famous scout. “But,” said I, “Mr. Graves, I hope you can make your owl hoots very natural. You know these fellows we are after are quite familiar with woodcraft, and they would only be aroused and made suspicious by a bad imitation of an owl.”

“Don’t you fear for that, captain. I can cheat the owls themselves, let alone these butternuts.”

Graves and Rogers left us with their party, disappearing as silently in the gloomy shadows of the night as wood goblins. I gathered my own men closely together, warned them in low tones against making the least noise, and then waited patiently for the signal.

While on board the boat or during the excitement of the march, I had not felt the cold; but now that we were quiet I found myself chilled to the bone, notwithstanding my thick pea-jacket, which I wore with my sword and pistol belt buckled outside of it. Occasionally I heard the distant baying of a hound; a possum or rabbit rustled through the dead leaves as he crossed the path, and once I heard the hoot of an owl from the woods in the rear of the house we were watching. I listened anxiously, but there was only a single call, evidently not from our companions. Then I heard what boded ill for the success of our venture—the sharp yelp of a foxhound near the barn, and soon it was repeated nearer at hand!

“The brute has scented us, sir,” said Mr. Watson, “and he will have the whole place alarmed if he is not stopped. What shall we do?”

But before he had finished speaking, three distant hoots of an owl were heard. We paused, and in a moment they were followed by a single hoot, and then all was still.

“Five minutes more, Watson, and we will make our rush. Let the cur bark if he will.”

Again the hoot of the owl broke the stillness of the night, this time nearer, and, giving the word, we rushed at double-quick from our cover, deployed, and, as our comrades appeared, we had the house closely surrounded on every side.

“Keep a sharp lookout, Mr. Watson, and do not let a living soul pass your line. Don’t parley with any who may try to escape. If they fail to stop and throw up their hands, shoot! We have shrewd and dangerous men to deal with, sir.”

With Rogers, Graves, and a dozen men I mounted the steps of the porch and knocked loudly at the door. There was no reply, but we could hear movements within.

“Better not wait, captain,” said Graves; “the Lord only knows what trick they may be up to. I would break in the door.” And break it in we did.

Then, turning the slides of our boat lanterns, we flashed the light into the hall, which was bare and empty. Near the foot of the stairs was a rough cedar settle with a row of pegs, from which hung a quantity of feminine wraps of various kinds and colors, with a dozen or more bonnets and worsted head coverings, but not a single masculine garment or hat, save a dilapidated old broad-brimmed straw, which had evidently been left over from the past summer.

I saw Graves gazing at this array of women’s gear with a puzzled look on his face.

“Why, captain, this looks more like a young ladies’ boarding-school than a bushwhacker’s crib. What does it mean, I wonder?”

A feeble light flashed over the banisters from the upper landing, and a tremulous female voice exclaimed, “What is it you want here, gentlemen, at this time of night?”

“Well, madam,” I replied, “we want Mr. Kane for one, and such of his friends—men, I mean, not women—as may be here.”

“Mr. Kane is not here, sir, I assure you.”

“I regret to doubt your word, madam, but it is my painful duty to search this house, and I must do it quickly. Please dress yourself at once, for I can allow you only five minutes for your toilet.”

The lady gave a little scream. “Oh, sir, you mustn’t come up here with all those men. It is quite impossible. There are none here but women. There isn’t a man in the house.”

“Where are the men, then?” I queried.

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Cousin Bob and the boys are all away at a dance at Mr. Shriveley’s, five miles up the Greenberry road. They won’t be back until morning.”

Graves drew me aside. “She is fibbing; didn’t you notice how she hesitated? Those men are upstairs, and we shall have to go up for them.”

It was very probable that he was right, so I said: “Madam, much as I regret it, my duty is plain. Your house is surrounded by the forces of the United States, under my command. I must search this house for the persons I have come here to arrest, and I shall do it, disturbing you as little as possible. You can have five minutes undisturbed in which to dress yourself—not a moment more.”

She saw that I was in earnest and hurried away. Sending some men with Mr. Watson to thoroughly search the lower rooms, we went upstairs at the expiration of the five minutes, and found three large chambers with dormer windows giving upon the roof. The first room we entered had two beds, and by the dim light of our lantern four heads could be seen buried beneath the bed clothing.

“Well, sir,” said the lady we had first encountered, as she entered the room wearing a morning wrapper, with a shawl drawn about her shoulders, “are you satisfied that I told you the truth and that there are no men here?”

The smothered giggle that came from beneath the blankets was unmistakably feminine. Our position was certainly becoming embarrassing, not to say ridiculous, and I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable under the gaze of the lady who was acting as spokeswoman.

To tell the honest truth, I would rather have been facing a ten-gun battery just then—and the worst of it was that the woman evidently knew it.

Graves, who was of a coarser temperament, came to the rescue: “Madam,” said he, “Captain Kelson has already told you that we are here on duty and that we must perform it. If the persons in these beds are women, let them put out their hands,—they can keep their faces hid if they choose,—and we will be satisfied,” and he looked at me for my assent.

“That is a fair proposition, madam, and will bring this disagreeable business to an end,” said I.

The lady hesitated, then went to the beds and whispered to the occupants, and out came four white, ringed, and very shapely hands from beneath the coverings.

“I am satisfied, madam,” said I, “and as a matter of form Mr. Graves will accompany you alone to the other chambers and put the occupants to the same test.”

Graves went with the lady, while we waited in the hall, and when he returned he was almost dumb with amazement.

“There are sixteen women in this house, not counting the madam here, and not a ghost of a man! What does it mean? I feel as though I had been raiding a nunnery!”

We went downstairs accompanied by our fair friend, who, strange to say, now that our search was over, seemed uncommonly willing to talk, carefully evading our questions, however, when we endeavored to obtain some clue to this houseful of girls,—for most of them were evidently young women.

While I was apologizing as best I could for our ungallant and untimely visit, there was the report of a musket outside, and as we rushed to the porch a half dozen scattering shots were heard in the direction of the barn, while the hounds set up a dismal howl.

Mr. Watson came toward me in a great state of excitement.

“They have got away, sir!”

“Who have got away?”

“The men! There were a dozen of them in the barn and hearing us they quietly broke a board out at the back and got away in the woods. The last man of them made a noise and attracted our attention, and we tried to catch him; but he had the start of us and got away with the rest of them!”

It was even so; while we were searching the house and were being detained by the fluent young woman, her friends were escaping.

It seems they had had a little dance at the house, and a number of girls had ridden over to take part in it. When it was finished it was too late for them to go to their homes, so their hostess had doubled them up in her beds, and the men had quartered themselves in the barn and thus escaped capture.

We returned to the Hastings and made the best of our way back to our headquarters, with very little to say to the outside world concerning our raid. This episode, however, commencing in comedy, had a tragic ending for at least one of the actors.

Graves, the scout, was soon after sent on a special mission by the general on the other side of the river, not far from Jackson, within the Confederate lines. By an unfortunate chance he there met, face to face, one day, the young woman who had parleyed with us at her cousin’s house on White River. Graves was in Confederate uniform, which he often wore on these scouting expeditions, but the woman recognized him at once and denounced him to the military authorities. He was arrested, tried before a drum-head court martial, and was hanged within twelve hours!

CHAPTER XI
THE END OF THE STRUGGLE

On the 9th of the following April, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia to General U. S. Grant, beneath the famous Appomattox apple-tree, and our long civil war was practically closed.

For months afterward, straggling bands of Confederates would come riding down to the banks of the river on the Mississippi and Arkansas coasts, and, waving flags of truce, ask for confirmation of the news they had heard, that “the old man had surrendered.” The gunboats had been supplied with official printed copies of the terms of capitulation accepted by Lee, and we gave these out freely.

It was an interesting sight to watch these war-worn veterans as, with varying emotions, they read the documents that proved to them that the cause for which they had fought so long and so well was irretrievably lost.

Most of them frankly accepted the situation at once; some seemed relieved that the disastrous struggle was at last over; all were surprised and gratified to find that they were to have Grant’s liberal terms,—permission to retain their side-arms, horses, and saddles.

So they went their way to their several plantations, saddened men, but with an evident determination to devote themselves in the future much more closely to their own private affairs and to give politics the go-by.

In the summer of 1865 the Navy Department issued a circular to the large body of volunteer officers in the navy, notifying them that as hostilities had ceased, the department would accept the resignations of such as desired to return to private life.

And so in July, I, with many other of my brother officers, sent in my resignation, which was accepted with the thanks of the department “for long and faithful service,” and I received my honorable discharge, a document which, duly framed, now hangs over my library fireplace, crossed by the sword which I had worn during the four eventful years of the civil war.

Since 1865 the old sailor whose career you have followed has had no more hairbreadth ’scapes by field or flood, such as have been here set down, and, barring a couple of peaceful passages to and from Europe in a passenger steamer, he has seen nothing more of the sea than could be observed from the rocks of Nahant or Mt. Desert on a summer afternoon. He meets his old shipmates occasionally at the dinners of the Loyal Legion, and enjoys listening to a good yarn on these occasions with as much zest as he did a full half century ago, when as a boy in the old Bombay he used to coil himself up near the windlass bitts on his first voyage to sea.

And now, after closing this record of more than twenty busy years of a sailor’s life in both branches of the service, the writer, from his cosy chimney corner, bids his readers reluctantly that saddest of all words, good-by.

Books for Young People.

---

Bret Harte.

The Queen of the Pirate Isle. A Child’s Story. Illustrated in colors by Kate Greenaway. Square 8vo, full gilt, $1.50.

Wilhelm Hauff.

Arabian Days’ Entertainments. Translated by H. P. Curtis. Illustrated by Hoppin. New Edition. 12mo, $1.50.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Little Pussy Willow, etc. Illustrated. Square 12mo, $1.25.

A Dog’s Mission, etc. Illustrated. Square 12mo, $1.25.

Queer Little People. Illustrated. Square 12mo, $1.25.

These three Juvenile books, $3.75.

Margaret Vandegrift.

Little Helpers. A Child’s Story. Profusely illustrated. Square 8vo, $1.50.

The Dead Doll, and Other Verses. Profusely illustrated. Square 8vo, $1.50.

Kate Douglas Wiggin.

The Birds’ Christmas Carol. Illustrated. New Edition. Square 12mo, boards, 50 cents.

The Story of Patsy. Illustrated. Square 12mo, boards, 60 cents.

A Summer in a Cañon. Illustrated. New Edition. 16mo, $1.25.

Timothy’s Quest. A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, who cares to read it. 16mo, $1.00.

The Story Hour. Short Stories for Young Children. By Mrs. Wiggin, and her sister, Nora A. Smith. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

Horace E. Scudder.

The Bodley Books. First Series. Profusely illustrated. Each volume, square 8vo, ornamental boards, $1.50. The set, 4 vols. $6.00.

1. Doings of the Bodley Family in Town and Country.

2. The Bodleys Telling Stories.

3. The Bodleys on Wheels.

4. The Bodleys Afoot.

The Bodley Books. Second Series. Profusely illustrated. Each volume, square 8vo, ornamental boards, $1.50. The set, 4 vols. $6.00.

1. Mr. Bodley Abroad.

2. The Bodley Grandchildren and their Journey in Holland.

3. The English Bodley Family.

4. The Viking Bodleys.

The Same, complete. The above 8 volumes in four. Square 8vo, flowered cloth, the set, $8.00.

George Washington. An Historical Biography. In Riverside Library for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents.

Dream Children. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

Seven Little People and their Friends. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

Stories from my Attic. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

Boston Town. The story of Boston told to children. Illustrated. Square 8vo, $1.50.

The Book of Fables, chiefly from Æsop. Chosen and Phrased by Horace E. Scudder. With Illustrations. 16mo, 40 cents, net.

The Book of Folk Stories. Rewritten by Horace E. Scudder. With frontispiece. 16mo, 60 cents.

Fables and Folk Stories. Part I. 16mo, paper. 15 cents, net.

Fables and Folk Stories. Part II. 16mo, paper. 15 cents, net.

The two bound together. 16mo, boards, 40 cents, net.

The Children’s Book. A collection of the best literature for Children. Edited by Horace E. Scudder. Illustrated. New Edition. Small 4to, 450 pages, $2.50.

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.25.

Holiday Edition. Illustrated by F. S. Church. 4to, full gilt, $2.50.

Little Classic Edition. 18mo, gilt top, $1.00.

The Same. In Riverside Literature Series, Nos. 17 and 18. Each 16mo, paper, 15 cents, net.

The two parts bound together, in one volume. 16mo, boards, 40 cents, net.

True Stories from History and Biography. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.25.

Little Classic Edition. 18mo, gilt top, $1.00.

True Stories from New England History, 1620-1692; Grandfather’s Chair, Part I. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With Questions.

True Stories from New England History, 1692-1760; Grandfather’s Chair, Part II. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With Questions.

True Stories from New England History, 1760-1803; Grandfather’s Chair, Part III. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With Questions.

In Riverside Literature Series, Nos. 7, 8, and 9. Each 16mo, paper, 15 cents, net.

Grandfather’s Chair (complete), comprising these three numbers bound together, in one volume. 16mo, boards, 45 cents, net.

Tanglewood Tales. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.25.

Holiday Edition. Illustrated by George Wharton Edwards. 4to, full gilt, $2.50.

Little Classic Edition. 18mo, gilt top, $1.00.

The Same. In Riverside Literature Series, Nos. 22 and 23. Each 16mo, paper, 15 cents, net.

The two parts bound together, in one volume. 16mo, boards, 40 cents, net.

A Wonder-Book, Tanglewood Tales, and Grandfather’s Chair. Riverside Edition. 1 vol. crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00.

Grandfather’s Chair. Popular Edition. 16mo, paper, 15 cents.

Little Daffydowndilly, and Other Stories. With Biographical Sketch. In Riverside Literature Series, No. 29. 16mo, paper, 15 cents, net.

Biographical Stories: Benjamin West, Sir Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Cromwell, Benjamin Franklin, Queen Christina. With Questions. The two last bound together, 16mo, boards, 40 cents, net.

The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales. Little Classic Edition. 18mo, gilt top, $1.00.

George Washington.

Rules of Conduct, Diary of Adventure, Letters, Farewell Addresses. With Introductions and Notes. In Riverside Literature Series, No. 24. 16mo, paper, 15 cents, net.

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.

Faith Gartney’s Girlhood. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.

Hitherto: A Story of Yesterdays. 12mo, $1.50.

Patience Strong’s Outings. 12mo, $1.50.

The Gayworthys. 12mo, $1.50.

A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.

We Girls: a Home Story. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.

Real Folks. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.

The Other Girls. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.

Sights and Insights. 2 vols. 12mo, $3.00.

Odd, or Even? 12mo, $1.50.

Bonnyborough. 12mo, $1.50.

Boys at Chequasset. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.

Homespun Yarns. Short Stories. 12mo, $1.50.

Ascutney Street. A New Book. 12mo, $1.50.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers.

Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphens, accents and spelling have been retained as they appear in the original publication except as follows:

• In the Contents, Part II, Chapter X.
  Hunting for Bushwackers changed to
  Hunting for [Bushwhackers]
• Page 268
  went downstairs acompanied by changed to
  went downstairs [accompanied] by