"'Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed, and the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, still must I on; for I am as a weed flung from the rocks on Ocean's foam to sail, where'er secession breeds, or treason's works prevail,'"—added Seth, altering the verse to suit the occasion.
The fleet had indeed been rudely handled in that rough night off the cape. But now sail after sail hove in sight, all making their way as best they could towards the inlet. This some reached, and got safely in before night. Others, attempting to enter, got aground, and were with difficulty got off again. Some anchored outside, and some lay off and on, waiting for morning, to be piloted past the shoals, and through the narrow channel, to a safe anchorage inside.
HATTERAS INLET.
But what a morning dawned! Another storm, more terrible than the first, had been raging all night, and its violence was still increasing. And now it came on to rain; and rain and wind and sea appeared to vie with each other in wreaking their fury on the ill-starred expedition.
Tuesday night the storm abated, and Wednesday brought fair weather. The fleet in the mean time had suffered perils and hardships which can never be told. Many of the transports were still missing. Many were at anchor outside the inlet, waiting for pilots to bring them in. Some had been lost. The "City of New York," a large steam propeller, freighted with stores and munitions of war, had struck on the bar, and foundered in the breakers. The crew, after clinging for twenty-four hours in the rigging to avoid being washed off by the sea, which made a clean breach over her, had been saved, but vessel and cargo were a total loss. Frank had watched the wreck, which seemed at one moment to emerge from the waves, and the next was half hidden by the incoming billows, and enveloped in a white shroud of foam.
The schooner had escaped the dangers of the sea, and was safe at last inside the inlet; as safe, at least, as any of the fleet, in so precarious an anchorage.
There was still another formidable bar to pass before the open waters of Pamlico Sound could be entered. The transports that had got in were lying in a basin, full of shoals, with but little room to swing with the tide, and they were continually running into each other, or getting aground. Nor was it encouraging to see bales of hay from one of the wrecks lodge at low water upon the very sand-bar which the fleet had still to cross.
Frank and his comrades took advantage of the fair weather to make observation of the two forts, Hatteras and Clark, which command the situation. These were constructed by the rebels, but had been captured from them by General Butler and Commodore Stringham, in August, 1861, and were now garrisoned by national troops. They stand on the south-western limb of one of the low, barren islands which separate this part of Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic. Between two narrow sand-spits the tides rush in and out with great force and rapidity; and this is the inlet—a mere passage cut through into the sound by the action of the sea.
As the schooner was being towed farther in, some men in a boat, who had been ashore at Fort Hatteras, and were returning to their ship, came alongside. The party consisted of some officers belonging to a New Jersey regiment, together with a boat's crew of six men.