The next day the fleet still lay in Hampton Roads. There were belonging to the expedition over one hundred and twenty-five vessels of all classes, freighted with troops, horses, forage, and all the paraphernalia of war. And this was the last morning which was to behold that magnificent and powerful armada entire and unscattered.
At night the fleet sailed. Once at sea, the sealed orders, by which each vessel was to shape its course, were opened, and Hatteras Inlet was found to be its first destination.
The next day was Sunday, January 12. The morning was densely foggy. Frank, who had been seasick all night, went on deck to breathe the fresh sea air. The steamer, still towing the Schooner, was just visible in the fog, at the other end of the great sagging hawser. And the sea was rolling, rolling, rolling. And the ship was tossing, tossing, tossing. And Frank's poor stomach, not satisfied with its convulsive efforts to turn him wrong side out the night before, recommenced heaving, heaving, heaving. He clung to the rail of the schooner, and every time it went down, and every time it came up, he seemed to grow dizzier and sicker than ever. He consoled himself by reflecting that he was only one of hundreds on hoard, who were, or had been, in the same condition; and when he was sickest he could not help laughing at Seth Tucket's inexhaustible drollery.
"Well, try again, ef ye want to," said that poetical private, addressing his stomach. "Be mean, and stick to it. Keep heaving, and be darned!"
Stomach took him at his word, and for a few minutes he leaned heavily by Frank's side.
"There!" he said to it, triumphantly, "ye couldn't do any thing, and I told ye so. Now I hope ye'll keep quiet a minute. Ye won't? Going at it again? Very well; do as you please; it's none o' my business—by gosh!"—lifting up his head with a bitter grin; "that inside of me is like Milton's chaos, in Paradise Lost. 'Up from the bottom turned by raging wind and furious assault!'—Here it goes again!"
Frank had been scarcely less amused by the misery of Jack Winch, who declared repeatedly that he should die, that he wished he was dead, and so forth, with groanings unutterable.
But Frank kept up his courage, and after eating a piece of hard bread for breakfast, began to feel better.
Towards noon the fog blew off, and the beach was visible on the right,—long, low, desolate, a shore of interminable sand, over which the breakers leaped and ran like hordes of wild horses with streaming tails and manes. Not a sign of vegetation was to be seen on that barren coast, nor any trace of human existence, save here a lonely house on the ridge, and yonder a dismantled wreck careened high upon the beach, or the ribs of some half-buried hulk protruding from the sand.
On the other side was an unbroken horizon of water. Numerous vessels of the fleet were still in sight And now a little steamer came dashing gayly along, hailed with cheers. It was the Picket, General Burnside's flag-ship.