What we have come to Fortress Monroe for no one can tell. In spite of a decisive order to sail forthwith for New Orleans, the wind refuses to blow. Another weary week of calm and fog intervenes. The Captain laments and growls, and says if we had kept on with that breeze, we could have been at the Hole-in-the-wall, and maybe at Abicum-light; but now there’s no telling when the wind will set in from the west—he’s known it set this way at this season for three weeks. The officers and men repeat the growls and lamentations, and fail not to ask me five hundred times a day what we have come to Fortress Monroe for.
The week of waiting ends, and a westerly wind assures us that we may start. “We must have a tug to tow us down,” says the Captain. “And we must have the water-boat along side,” says the mate. A boat load of officers and soldiers go ashore to make their last purchases. I wait on the dock and watch the water-boat as it puts off, and listen to the “yo he yo” on the “Alice Counce” and “Emily Sturges,” which tells me that their anchors are coming up.
The tug took us down—the pilot left us much as before, and we are now out at sea. The “Emily” led us by half an hour, and all day long was in sight, sailing closer to the wind and standing closer on the coast. As the evening closed in, we cast many jealous glances toward her, and asked each other which ship would be ahead in the morning.
The second day was a gloomy, wintry day, with a rising wind, and constantly increasing sea; and the second night out I felt the motion grow and grow, but thought it rather pleasant, and had no fears of evil consequences. I rose with the reveille, which seemed fainter than usual, steadied myself out of the cabin, and still knew no fear. I reached the deck and found that but four drummer boys rub-a-dubbed, and but few men had come up from below. I mounted to the poop deck, and there I found three lieutenants. There was something unusual about them. Two sat very still braced against a spar, while the third staggered violently up and down with a pale, in fact a ghastly face, and kept saying in a jolly manner to himself, “How are you, ship? how are you, o—oh—shun?”
“This is very strange,” thought I. “But perhaps they’re ill. I’ll ask them.”
“Gentlemen, are you sick—sea-sick?”
“Sick? oh no!”
Nobody was sick, so I turned and looked down on the main deck. The reveille had ended, yet the number on deck had not increased. A sergeant with five or six men in line was calling his roll in a loud voice, at which he and half his men repeatedly laughed, as though absence from roll-call was a capital joke.
It is usual for an officer from each company to come up to me immediately after the morning roll-call, and report the state of his company, “all present or accounted for,” or so many present and so many absent and not accounted for. I am somewhat strict about it, yet on this morning only one or two reported. I thought this negligence strange—unaccountable—yet for some reason or other, I did not go down and ascertain the cause of it. I turned toward the east. The sun was near his rising, and the crimson light filled the sky and tinged the white foam of the tossing waves. It was a splendid sight, and brought to mind one of the finest sea pieces of the Dusseldorf. I stood watching the wide expanse of heaving billows—the cloud-spotted sky under-lit with rays of the coming sun—the unnumbered waves breaking in long rolls of foam, silvered and gilded by the glowing east. I was lost in admiration, when I suddenly felt—sick! I made brave attempts to keep myself up—to weather it out—to stay on my legs—to stay on deck—to do something—to do anything. In vain!
That day the wind increased and blew a gale. Through the long hours of the afternoon the vessel plunged and tossed. Furniture broke loose and slid backward and forward across the cabin. The steward looked in, seized the vagrant pieces, and lashed them fast. Stragglers steadied themselves from door to table and from table to sofa, to say that all the others were down—that they began to feel a little qualmish, and that affairs were growing serious. Toward midnight there was a tremendous shock—the ship staggered and stood still, as though she had struck upon a rock; in an instant more the door of the forward cabin was burst open with a crash, and in another the water broke through the sky-light over my head, and poured, a torrent, on the cabin floor. To the men between decks it seemed a shipwreck. Yet there were not wanting a few heartless wretches, who, neither sea-sick nor frightened, made sport of all the others. “The ship’s struck a breaker,” roared one of these from his bunk. “All frightened men roll out and put on their boots to sink in.” “Struck,” “breakers,” “sinking,” sounded around, and several hundred men rolled out in the darkness, and frantically tried to put on their boots. With the next roll, away all hands went. Some caught at the bunks—some clutched each other—the penitent prayed—the wicked swore—the frightened blubbered—the sick and philosophical lay still. In the midst of the sliding, the scramble and the din, a voice rose from another bunk, “Captains”—it thundered in the style of a Colonel on drill—“rectify the alignment.” And the jokers added to the din their loud laughs of derision.