ADMIRAL PORTER SAVES THE BOY'S LIFE—INTERVIEW WITH THE REBEL FLAG-OF-TRUCE OFFICERS, WHO CLAIM HIM FOR A VICTIM—SCENES ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR—RETURN HOME BY SEA—RECEPTION IN NEW YORK—TELEGRAPH ACQUAINTANCES—NEW YORK PAPERS RECORD THE ADVENTURE IN FULL PAGE.
It will be seen that the Admiral was willing that I should be surrendered, and my life hung for several days in a balance, which, thank God, was held by Captain Porter.
Perry, knowing of these negotiations, was himself convinced that I was a Rebel Spy, whom they wanted to get back, and had kept a close watch on my actions; and, I presume, had set half the ship's crew to pick me up on any little circumstance which would serve to confirm his suspicions that I was in the service of the rebellion.
One day I was sitting on the "back stairs," or on the platform of the gangway aft the wheel-house, and, as the vessel had swung round, I could, from my location, see right over the water to the rebel lines. My position happened to be somewhat secluded, and I had in my hands a scrap of an old New York Ledger, that one of the tars had loaned me. I saw that I was being watched by Perry, who was in quiet consultation with the officer of the deck. A marine with a loaded musket had been ordered to look sharp that I did not fly over to the Rebs, I suppose.
While in this situation the thought burst upon me that I was a prisoner, suspected by my own friends of being a spy in their camp.
The interview that I had had in the cabin, with Captain Porter and Lieutenant Perry, the proposed trip to Mobile, with a dozen other little incidents, rushed through my brain at once, but I was comforted by the thought that the War Department would acknowledge my services. After this feeling had passed away from my mind to some extent, I recalled with bitterness some of Lieutenant Perry's actions and talks with me. Carelessly glancing around to see that he was still on deck, I wrote on the margin of that old paper some words that expressed, in language more emphatic than politic, the opinion I entertained of a certain officer, and whose conduct I should take care would be reported to the ears of the Navy Department. Before I had finished, a hand was laid on my shoulder; another reached down and snatched the paper from my hand; the young officer, whom I had seen talking to Perry but a few moments previously, said:
"Ah, sketching, are you?" as he took the paper and handed it to Mr. Perry, who was at his back, and he read with a flushed face the ugly comments on his brutality to a boy prisoner, who had done more for his country in one night than he would accomplish in his life-time.
"AH! SKETCHING, ARE YOU?"
For a boy, this was a pretty sharp trick, if it were not very discreet. Mr. Perry roughly said, as I put my hands in my pockets and looked at him defiantly: