“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!