Of the details of the affair we could learn little except that she came on board the Brilliant almost daily and Glenny visited her very frequently on shore. But this we did discover: that for love of this girl the young officer at last became a traitor and actually entered into a compact with the rebel officer commanding on shore to deliver up his ship to the Confederates.
The consideration for this treachery was to be a major’s commission in their army, a hundred bales of cotton, and one hundred thousand dollars in gold, while, as it was understood, the girl promised to marry Glenny when the deed was accomplished.
A plan was arranged by which a body of the Brilliant’s crew was to be given liberty on shore to go to a negro ball on a certain night, when the Confederates were to come off in boats in large numbers and take possession of the steamer, Glenny making a mere nominal resistance.
The sailors were duly sent on shore to the dance; but through a suspicion on the part of a vigilant junior officer of the Brilliant, the consummation of the plot was thwarted and the attempted surprise failed.
Meanwhile, news of the proposed plan was carried down to New Orleans by a deserter from Dick Taylor’s corps, and it came to Commodore Morris, who took prompt action by sending to me to place Glenny under arrest.
Mr. Willetts told me that he obeyed my orders by placing Captain Glenny under close arrest, and had stationed a sentry at the door of his stateroom and another at the window, which opened on the guards. The first night, however, at midnight, Glenny quietly got up, dressed himself, and, looking out of the window, said in a calm voice to the sentry, “Take this pitcher to the scuttle butt and bring me some cool water!”
With the instinctive impulse of obedience to a commanding officer, the man at once obeyed and went for the water, without a second thought.
During his absence Glenny crawled out of the window to the guards and lowered himself down by a rope into a small fishing-canoe they had towing alongside. He then cut the painter, and in a moment he had dropped astern in the swift current and vanished in the darkness!
We never saw Glenny again, but I heard of him a couple of years later from a Texan who had met him, under another name, in the Confederacy at about the time of Lee’s surrender.
One thing is very sure: had the rebels succeeded in getting possession of the Brilliant, as they planned, and had obtained her signal book from Glenny, they could have filled her with armed men, steamed down to the Benton, made their night number and ran alongside of us without exciting suspicion, and, pouring a large body of men on my decks, could have captured my ship almost without a struggle.