On the 16th of November, 1865, the remainder of our battalion was mustered out of the U. S. service.
CHAPTER XVIII.
On the 17th, we marched down to the wharf, embarked on the Steamship “J. W. Everman,” to start down the home stretch. We took on six hundred barrels of coal and at one p. m. we ran out of the bay. While getting on board, one of our boys fell overboard. A Dutch teamster, by the name of Oose Yager, pitched a rope to him, and he was lucky enough to get hold of the end of it and Oose hauled away at it, in the meantime bawling out, “Hold to the wope! Hold to the wope!” This afterwards became a by-word. The poor fellow who fell overboard was saved from the sharks, as many of them were swimming around the ship.
The water was as smooth as glass and as blue as the sky, not a riffle was to be seen. Many huge sharks were keeping pace with the vessel. The sea gulls would light on the masts and flap their wings and chirp. All of the boys were filled with joy at the prospect of getting to see the loved ones at home once more. Some of them were feeling good from turning up their canteens too often. The sailors laughed and said, “You will change your tune before going to bed, for the darkest hours of life they say, come just before the brightest day.”
At six p. m. we saw a small black cloud which looked as if it were on top of the water. It soon seemed like mountains of snow were rolling toward us. The waves rolled fifty feet high. When they struck the vessel, the rudder came unshipped and we logged along, once more at the mercy of God.
The sailors went up to clear the deck, but some of our drinking boys, who were on deck drove them down and swore that they were running that craft and were going home. One could hear them yell, “Hold to the wope.” But it was a different scene down in the hull. Some were trying to pray and others were too sick to do anything but roll from one side of the vessel to the other and vomit.
That horrible night will never be forgotten by some of the boys of the old 24th Indiana. The morning of the 18th came and found our little wrecked vessel still wallowing in the foamy billows of that stormy deep. The storm had abated just a little. We knew not how far we had been carried from our course by the storm and the compass was out of order. The captain of the vessel had to do something, so he set the reef sails, got up steam, and pulled out to find land somewhere.
On the 19th the sea was calmer, but no land was to be seen. The morning of the 20th found us anchored in sight of Powder Horn, at the mouth of Matagorda Bay. This was not many miles from Indianola, one hundred ten miles from Galveston, after we had been tossed about by the storm, five or six hundred miles.