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.