Jack then went on to say that, as soon as the officer had taken his place in the stern-sheets, the cutter was shoved off from the Hatteras and pulled around her stern; but just as she began swinging around with her bow toward the supposed English ship a most exciting and unexpected thing happened. A voice came from the latter’s deck, so clear and strong that the cutter’s crew could hear every word:
“This is the Confederate steamer Alabama!” And before the astonished blue-jackets had time to realize that they had been trapped the roar of a broadside rent the air, and shells and solid shot went crashing into the wooden walls of the doomed Hatteras. Semmes afterward took great credit to himself because he did not strike the Federal ship in disguise, but gave her “fair warning.” How long was it after he gave warning that he fired his broadside into her? Not two seconds. He took all the advantage he could, and yet there was no one who protested louder or had more to say about trickery and cowardice when the Federal officers took advantage of him. He made a great fuss because Captain Winslow protected the machinery and boilers of the Kearsarge with chains, as Admiral Farragut protected his vessels when he ran past the forts at New Orleans.
The roar of the Confederate steamer’s guns had scarcely ceased before an answering broadside came from the Union war ship. Without the loss of a moment both vessels were put under steam and the action became a running fight, the blue-jackets standing bravely to their guns and giving their powerful antagonist as good as she sent. The cutter’s crew tried in vain to return to their vessel. They rowed hard, but every turn of her huge paddle-wheels left them farther behind, and finally they gave up in despair and laid on their oars and watched the conflict. It was desperate but short. In just thirteen minutes from the time it began the Hatteras hoisted a white light at her masthead and fired an off-gun to show that she had been beaten.
“Fortune of war,” sighed the officer who was sitting in the cutter’s stern-sheets beside the coxswain. “But I tell you, men, I hate to see our old ship surrendered to that pirate. Back, port; give way, starboard! We haven’t surrendered, and we want to get away from here before they catch sight of us.”
No cutter’s crew ever pulled harder than Jack Gray and his shipmates pulled in obedience to this order. Jack forgot that he had a crippled arm, and when the cutter came about and pointed her head toward the shore more than twenty miles away, he rowed as strong an oar as he ever did in his life. He listened anxiously for the hail that would tell him the cutter had been discovered, but heard none; but he saw and reported something that sent an exultant thrill through the heart of every one of his companions.
“Mr. Porter,” said he, in tones which intense excitement rendered husky. “Our old tub has been surrendered, but she’ll never do the rebels any good. She’s sinking, sir.”
“Thank Heaven!” murmured the officer, whirling around as if he had been shot.
He couldn’t see anything through the darkness except the white light that the blockader had hoisted at her masthead in token of surrender, and which was swaying about in a way that would have been unaccountable to a landsman; but the blue-jackets knew she was going to the bottom. She went rapidly, too, for Captain Blake afterward reported that in two minutes from the time he left her the Hatteras disappeared, bow first. Then Jack thought that Mr. Porter would order the cutter back to assist in picking up the crew, but he didn’t do it. They would have reached the sinking vessel too late to be of any service, and besides Mr. Porter thought it his duty to report to the Flag-officer at once, believing that if the Brooklyn were promptly warned she could capture or sink the Alabama before she had time to get very far away. But the fleet had already been warned by the sound of the guns that the Hatteras had encountered an armed enemy of some description, and several steamers were hastening to the rescue; scattering widely in the pursuit, to cover as much space as possible and increase their chances of falling in with the enemy. The cutter passed these vessels at so great a distance that she could not attract the attention of any of them, and it was not until they had pulled all the way to Galveston, and boarded one of the blockading fleet which remained behind, that the particulars of the fight became known. None of the pursuing steamers ever saw the Alabama, which sailed away for the coast of Yucatan; but as one of them was returning to her anchorage the next morning, baffled and beaten in the chase, she fell in with the sunken Hatteras, whose royal masts were just above water. The night pennant floating from one of them told the melancholy story; but if Jack Gray and his shipmates had not escaped just as they did, it might have been a long time before Commodore Bell would have known that the dreaded Alabama had been in his immediate vicinity. But her day was coming. The first time she met a Union war ship that was anywhere near her match she was sent to the bottom.
Once more Jack was without a vessel, and had no clothes “to bless himself with” except those he stood in; but that didn’t trouble him half as much as did the discharge he was anxious to get. He and the rest of the cutter’s men were sent aboard the flagship when she returned to her anchorage, and that suited him, for it gave him a fair chance to gain the commodore’s ear—a task he set himself to accomplish as soon as the excitement had somewhat died away. But the Flag-officer was a regular, and like all regulars he moved in ruts of opinion so deep that a yoke of oxen could not have pulled him out. He couldn’t give Jack a discharge, he said, because he didn’t know when or where he enlisted, for how long, or anything about it. He couldn’t give him any money, either, for his name was not borne on the paymaster’s books. He could give him a paper stating that he had done service in the Union navy and let him go home, and that was all he could do for him.
“And that’s the kind of a discharge I got,” said Jack with a laugh. “But it proved to be good enough and strong enough to take me through the provost guards in New Orleans and get me a pass to come up here. I have not drawn a cent from Uncle Sam, so he owes me a year’s wages and better, as well as a lot of prize money. The commodore dispatched a vessel to New Orleans with his report of the loss of the Hatteras, and I was permitted to take passage on her.”