It may be of interest to our readers to give some other adventures in which the "Banshee" figured. On one of her trips, when she was creeping down the land about twelve miles above Fort Fisher, a cruiser appeared moving along about two hundred yards from shore. An effort was made to pass her inside, hoping to be hidden by the dark background of the land. But there were eyes open on the cruiser, and there came the ominous hail, "Stop that steamer or I will sink you!"
"We haven't time to stop," growled Steele, and shouted down the engine-room tube to "pile on the coals." There was nothing now but to run and hope for luck. The cruiser at once opened fire, and as the "Banshee" began to draw ahead a shot carried away her foremast and a shell exploded in her bunkers. Grape and canister followed, the crew escaping death by flinging themselves flat on the deck. Even the steersman, stricken by panic, did the same, and the boat swerved round and headed straight for the surf. A close shave it was as Taylor rushed aft, clutched the wheel, and just in time got her head off the land. Before they got in two other cruisers brought them under fire, but they ran under Fort Fisher in safety.
One more adventure of the "Banshee" and we shall close. It was on her sixth trip out. She had got safely through the fleet and day had dawned. All was joy and relaxation when Erskine, the engineer, suddenly exclaimed: "Mr. Taylor, look astern!" and there, not four miles away, and coming down under sail and steam, was a large side-wheel steamer, left unseen by gross carelessness on the part of the look-out.
Erskine rushed below, and soon volumes of smoke were pouring from the funnels, but it was almost too late, for the chaser was coming up so fast that the uniformed officers on her bridge could be distinctly seen.
"This will never do," said Steele, and ordered the helm to be altered so as to bring the ship up to the wind. It took them off the course to Nassau, but it forced their pursuer to take in her sails, and an exciting chase under steam right into the wind's eye began. Matters at length became so critical that no hope remained but to lighten the boat by throwing overboard her deck-load of cotton—a sore necessity in view of the fact that the bales which went bobbing about on the waves were worth to them £50 or £60 apiece.
In clearing out the bales they cleared out something more, a runaway slave, who had been standing wedged between two bales for at least forty-eight hours. He received an ovation on landing at Nassau, but they were obliged to pay four thousand dollars to his owner on their return to Wilmington.
The loss of the cotton lightened the boat and it began to gain in the race, both craft plunging into the great seas that had arisen, yet neither slackening speed. A fresh danger arose when the bearings of the engine became overheated from the enormous strain put upon them. It was necessary to stop, despite the imminence of the chase, and to loosen the bearings and feed them liberally with salad oil mixed with gunpowder before they were in working order again. Thus, fifteen weary hours passed away, and nightfall was at hand when the chaser, then only five miles astern, turned and gave up the pursuit. It was learned afterward that her stokers were dead beat.
But port was still far away, they having been chased one hundred and fifty miles out of their course, and fuel was getting perilously low. At the end of the third day the last coal was used, and then everything that would burn was shoved into the furnaces,—main-mast, bulwarks, deck cabin, with cotton and turpentine to aid,—and these only sufficed to carry them into a Bahama Island, still sixty miles from Nassau. They were not there two hours before they saw a Federal steamer glide slowly past, eying them as the fox eyed the grapes.
The adventure was still not at its end. Mr. Taylor hired a schooner in the harbor to go to Nassau and bring back a cargo of coal, he and Murray Aynsely, a passenger, going in it. But the night proved a terrible one, a hurricane rising, and the crew growing so terrified by the fury of the gale and the vividness of the lightning that they nearly wrecked the schooner on the rocks. When the weather moderated the men refused to proceed, and it was only by dint of a show of revolvers and promise of reward that Taylor and his passenger induced them to go on. On reaching Nassau they were utterly worn out, having been almost without sleep for a week, while Taylor's feet were so swollen that his boots had to be cut off.
Thus ended one of the most notable chases in the history of blockade-running, it having lasted fifteen hours and covered nearly two hundred miles. Fortunate was it for the "Banshee" that the "James Adger," her pursuer, had no bow-chasers, and that the weather was too ugly for her to venture to yaw and use her broadside guns, or the "Banshee" might have there and then ended her career.