I did not return to California after my visit to the seat of war until late in the month of July, 1862. Everything seemed in regular shape for outfitting a privateer. But again the Comstock Lode interfered. Speculation was fast and furious. Of those who subscribed to the fund of $250,000 to carry on the enterprise only two remained steadfast, Mr. Ridgley Greathouse and myself. Greathouse was connected with some of the well-known families of the South and of California. He was a man of unusual courage and determination. We laid our heads together and decided to go ahead alone.
At this point we gained an unexpected ally. As he cuts quite a figure in this story, especially in the great diamond hoax, I might as well explain the strange way in which we met.
Mr. Alfred Rubery was a young English gentleman of fortune and culture, with the roving disposition and love of venture that was part of the make of high-strung Englishmen of his day. Traveling in the South just before the war, he had acquired an admiration for its aristocracy. Thus happened something that seemed paradoxical. Rubery was the favorite nephew of John Bright, the great English statesman and publicist. It was due to his influence and leadership among the laboring masses that England declined to interfere in favor of the Confederate States when its industries were ruined and the industrial classes starving, because the cotton staples from the South, on which they depended, were suddenly cut off. Thus, while John Bright, across the Atlantic, was resolutely upholding the North, his dear nephew in San Francisco was openly expressly sympathy for the South.
Sectional feeling at that period was so intense that the slightest word brought on a quarrel. One evening Rubery met a young officer, Lieutenant Tompkins, stationed at Fort Point, scion of a prominent family of New York. Somehow the subject of the war was broached. High words followed, and Tompkins made a remark that touched Rubery’s honor. The latter simply said, “You will hear from me, sir,” and left the room.
The code duello was still in full force. Though a cause of instant dismissal from the army, no officer would hesitate for a moment to refuse satisfaction to a gentleman who considered himself aggrieved. Rubery sought a friend of mine and asked him to bear his challenge. He was on the point of leaving for Oregon to attend to some of my business. For that reason he turned the young Englishman over to me.
ALFRED RUBERY
Nephew of John Bright, the great British publicist
[Reproduced from an
old photograph.]
Now, when a man chose his second, he placed his life entirely in his hands. It became at once my duty to examine certain details. The challenged party had the right to name the weapons, and I knew Tompkins to be an expert swordsman. I asked my man about his saber experience. He admitted that he had some knowledge of carving ham, but as to carving anything else he was as ignorant as a child. I tried him at pistol practice and found that, with extra good luck, at ten paces he could hit a barn.