My second trip to Charleston furnished a degree of excitement that exalted my soul. While we were held up at Turk’s Island the blockading fleet had been strengthened and supplemented by several small and fast boats which cruised around outside of the line. Without knowing this I had decided—it must have been in response to a “hunch”—to make a dash straight through the line and into the harbor. It was fortunate that we followed this plan for they were expecting us to come up from the south, hugging the shore as we had done before, and if we had taken that course they certainly would have sunk us or forced us aground. We were proceeding cautiously but did not think we were close to the danger zone when suddenly one of the patrol ships picked us up and opened fire. Her guns were no better than peashooters but they gave the signal to the fleet and instantly lights popped up all along the line ahead of us. When caught in such a trap, if I had not been thirsting for thrills, I would have shown them our heels, for we could have gotten away without any trouble; but the demon of dare-deviltry seized and gripped me.
In the flashing lights ahead I saw all of the excitement I had been longing for, and with an exultant yell to the helmsman to “tell the engineer to give her hell,” I pushed him aside and seized the wheel. I fondled the spokes lovingly and leaned over them in a tumult of joy. It was the great moment of which I had dreamed from boyhood. I had anticipated that when it came I would be considerably excited and forgetful of all my carefully thought out plans for meeting an emergency, but to my surprise I found that I was as cool as though we were riding at anchor in New York Bay. In the first flash I felt myself grow cold all over and then a gentle current of electricity began running through me, as though my heart had been transformed into a dynamo and my veins into fine wires. The opening gun cleared my mind of all its anxieties and intensified its action. I remember that I took time to analyze my feelings to make sure that I was calm and collected and not stunned and stolid, and that I was silent from choice and not through anything of fear. I counted the blockading ships as their hidden lights flashed out and wondered how their officers and crews enjoyed being dragged out of their first sound sleep by my impertinent little vessel. I measured the distance we would have to go to clear their line and tried to figure out, from a rough calculation as to the number of their guns and the accuracy of their fire, the mathematical probability of our being sunk. Strange though it may seem, the possibility of our capture never occurred to me. We might be sent to the bottom, and would be if it were so decreed by Fate, but otherwise we would get away, and the only other question was as to the nature and extent of our injuries. When we were fairly under their spiteful guns I thought of what great sport it would be if we could only return their fire on something like even terms. I compared the wide, individualistic opportunity of naval warfare with routine battles on land, which are fought by rules laid down for every condition that can arise, and unhesitatingly decided in favor of the sea, with its long-nursed passion for the man who dares its fury, and its despotism over him who fears it.
As though spurred by a human impulse the good little ship sprang forward as she felt the full force of her engines, and never did she make such another race of it as she did that night. In the sea then running and at the speed we were going we would ordinarily have had two men at the wheel, but I found it so easy and so delightful to handle the ship alone that I declined the assistance of Captain Williams, who stood just behind me. Though I am not tall, being not much over five feet and eight inches, nature was kind in giving me a well set up frame and a powerful constitution, devoid of nerves but with muscles of steel,—in those days and for many years after,—and with a reserve supply of strength that made me marvel at its source. Through all of my active life I kept myself in as perfect condition as a trained athlete, despite occasional dissipations ashore, and I never got into a close corner without feeling myself possessed of the strength of half a dozen ordinary men. Consequently the tugs of the wheel as we tore through the water toward Charleston seemed like a child’s pulls on a string.
The widest opening in the already closing line was, luckily, directly in front of us, and I headed for it. The sparks that were streaming from our smokestack and the lights of the patrol which was trying to follow us, gave the blockaders our course as plainly as though it had been noonday, and they closed in from both sides to head us off. Evidently they considered that time was also fleeting for they lost not a moment in getting their guns to going, and shot and shell screamed and sang all around the undaunted “Letter B.” First the mainmast and then the foremast came down with a crash, littering the decks with their gear. A shell carried death into the forecastle. One shot tore away the two forward stanchions of the pilot house and another one smashed through the roof but neither Captain Williams nor I was injured by so much as a splinter. All of our boats and most of our upper works were literally shot to pieces. That we were not sent to the bottom on the run was no tribute to the skill of the Yankee gunners. They could not have been more than half awake when they began firing on us and we were flying so fast that it appeared to disconcert them, even after they got their bearings. If they had taken time to depress their guns the race would have been a short one, but they all wanted to sink us at once, with the result that only one shot struck us below the main deck, and that did very little damage to the ship.
From first to last we must have been under that terrific fire for half an hour but it seemed not more than a few minutes, and it really was with something of regret that I found the shots were falling astern, for I had enjoyed the experience immensely. When we got up to the dock we found that five of our men had been killed and a dozen more or less seriously injured. The ship had not been damaged at all so far as speed and seaworthiness in ordinary weather were concerned, though she looked a wreck. The blockaders thought we were much more seriously injured than was actually the case but their mistake was one that could easily be pardoned. They expected we would be laid up for a month. Consequently when we steamed out on the fourth night, after making only temporary repairs, they were not looking for us and we got through their line without much trouble. A few shots were fired at us when we were almost clear but not one of them came aboard and we were not pursued; they had come to have great respect for our speed. We refitted at Turk’s Island, where we laid up for three weeks.
I made two more trips to Charleston without any very exciting experiences, though we were fired on both times, and then sold the ship to an enterprising Englishman who was waiting for me at Turk’s Island. I had made a comfortable fortune with her and sold her for more than I paid for her. She was in almost as good condition as when I bought her, but I have made it a rule never to overplay my luck, and I knew I had run about as many trips with her as I could expect to make without a change of fortune. I am under the impression that the ship and her new owner were captured on her next trip to Charleston, but am not sure as to that.
CHAPTER II
FILIBUSTERING FOR THE CUBANS
HAVING succeeded as a blockade runner I was ambitious to become a filibuster, which kindred vocation I thought offered even greater opportunities for adventure. Immediately after the sale of the “Letter B,” in the latter part of 1864, I returned to New York, in the hope that the Cespedes revolution in Cuba would have been sprung and a Junta established with which I could work. I found that the revolt was still hatching and that no New York agent had been appointed, so, for want of something better to do, I bought from Benjamin Wood, editor of the New York News, the old Franklin Avenue distillery in Brooklyn. This venture resulted in an open and final rupture with my family, who were virtuously outraged to begin with because of the aid I had given the South as a blockade runner. I left home in a rage and swore that I would never again set foot in it or set eyes on any member of the family, and except for a visit to my father just before he died, not long afterward, I have kept my vow. I was always his favorite son, in spite of my wild love of adventure and the ways into which it led me, and when I got word that he was seriously ill I went to him at once, but I saw no one else in the house except the servants.
The Franklin Avenue distillery was then the largest in the East but it had not been in operation for several years. I put Charles McLaughlin in charge of the plant and set it in motion. Two or three other distilleries were then running in Williamsburg, one of which was owned by Oscar King. I had been in the distillery business only a few months, during which time the property had shown a large profit, when, while attending a performance at the old Grand Opera House with Andrew W. Gill, I met “Jim” Fisk, with whom I had become acquainted in my boyhood days. At the time I had known him he was running a gaudy pedler’s wagon out of Boston. He was laid up for a week by a prank which I played on him in George Steele’s store at Ferrisburg, Vermont, but after that we became good friends.
Fisk, big and loudly dressed and displaying the airs which later helped to earn for him the sobriquet of “Jim Jubilee Junior,” entered the theatre in company with Jay Gould, his new friend and future partner in the looting of the Erie and the great Gold Conspiracy, to say nothing of many minor maraudings into misappropriated millions. In the dramatic surroundings, Gould, half-dwarfed but plainly making up in nerve and shrewdness what he lacked in stature, with his black beard and darting eyes and his careless attire, put me in mind of a pirate, wherein my artistic judgment played me no trick, and, to complete the picture, Fisk suggested himself as the little man’s business agent. Fisk swept his eyes around the theatre with something of a look of challenge, as though he wondered if there were any persons there who knew him, and, if so, how much they knew about him. His roving gaze fell on me and he nodded and smiled. A moment later he excused himself and came over to talk to me, while Gould followed him with his snapping eyes and drove them through me with a searching inquiry which seemed to satisfy him that I was simply an old acquaintance and harbored no predatory plot. Their intimacy was then in its infancy and Gould appeared to be half suspicious of every man with whom Fisk talked.