"Well, my boy, I wish I were going with you this morning."
He gave the order to let go and soon we were bouncing over the water toward the transport, which was smoking and hissing away at a great rate some distance from our ship but nearer the shore. When we pulled alongside I braced myself for the climb up her side, when Lieutenant Queen should give the signal. He had gone aboard ahead and delayed sometime; presently he appeared at the ship's side and began to descend to our boat again; I thought his manner a little queer, as I watched him with astonishment; once in the boat, he was about to give the order to pull off, when the captain of the transport hailed him and said:
"I'm sorry, but don't you forget to tell Porter it's not my fault."
After a little further talk in an undertone, Mr. Queen told the coxswain to go ahead, and then turning to me said:
"There's some mistake, they say they can't take you, they have no room."
My feelings may be imagined—they can not be described. I was so disappointed that I was literally struck dumb, and could not speak a word on our return to the ship, and was led aboard by the good-hearted old sailors as if I had just been rescued from a watery grave.
Going to our ship's side, I looked over the water in the early grey of the morning and saw the transport, on which I had built my every hope of home, slowly but surely steaming away toward home, and I still on the ship and a prisoner. How long I stood there I do not know; probably until the fast-sailing transport had almost gotten out of my dimmed sight. I cried, of course I did, like a big baby, and on board a man-of-war, too; and being too proud to show it, I kept my face resolutely set toward the receding ship that was going home without me.
I didn't even have such a thing as a handkerchief to dry those tears, bitter tears, which would run down my cheeks and drop into the sea below me.
Mr. Queen, who had reported his trip to Captain Porter, hunted me up to say that "the captain would see that I was taken care of and sent home all right."
Speaking in his kindly, sympathetic manner, seemed to renew my emotion, and turning my wet cheeks to him I said, I fear somewhat harshly, "I'll never again undertake anything that would get me aboard a naval officer's ship."