If he had said that the vessel was on fire the shock would hardly have been greater. Of course, the military commander on board a steamer is almost as helpless as an unarmed man, so far as the risks of water go. A seaman must command there. In the hazardous voyage of last night, I had learned, though unjustly, to distrust every official on board the steamboat except this excitable, brave, warm-hearted sailor; and now, among these added dangers, to lose him! The responsibility for his life also thrilled me; he was not among my soldiers, and yet he was killed. I thought of his wife and children, of whom he had spoken; but one learns to think rapidly in war, and, cautioning the Major to silence, I went up to the hurricane-deck and drew in the helpless body, that it should be safe from further desecration, and then looked to see where we were.
We were now gliding past a safe reach of marsh, while our assailants were riding by cross-paths to attack us at the next bluff. It was Reed's Bluff where we were first attacked, and Scrubby Bluff, I think, was next. They were shelled in advance, but swarmed manfully to the banks again as we swept round one of the sharp angles of the stream beneath their fire. My men were now pretty well imprisoned below in the hot and crowded hold, and actually fought each other, the officers afterwards said, for places at the open port-holes, from which to aim. Others implored to be landed, exclaiming that they "supposed de Cunnel knew best," but it was "mighty mean" to be shut up down below, when they might be "fightin' de Secesh in de clar field." This clear field, and no favor, was what they thenceforward sighed for. But in such difficult navigation it would have been madness to think of landing, although one daring Rebel actually sprang upon the large boat which we towed astern, where he was shot down by one of our sergeants. This boat was soon after swamped and abandoned, then taken and repaired by the Rebels at a later date, and finally, by a piece of dramatic completeness, was seized by a party of fugitive slaves, who escaped in it to our lines, and some of whom enlisted in my own regiment.
It has always been rather a mystery to me why the Rebels did not fell a few trees across the stream at some of the many sharp angles where we might so easily have been thus imprisoned. This, however, they did not attempt, and with the skilful pilotage of our trusty Corporal,—philosophic as Socrates through all the din, and occasionally relieving his mind by taking a shot with his rifle through the high portholes of the pilot-house,—we glided safely on. The steamer did not ground once on the descent, and the mate in command, Mr. Smith, did his duty very well. The plank sheathing of the pilot-house was penetrated by few bullets, though struck by so many outside that it was visited as a curiosity after our return; and even among the gun-crews, though they had no protection, not a man was hurt. As we approached some wooded bluff, usually on the Georgia side, we could see galloping along the hillside what seemed a regiment of mounted riflemen, and could see our shell scatter them ere we approached. Shelling did not, however, prevent a rather fierce fusilade from our old friends of Captain dark's company at Waterman's Bluff, near Township Landing; but even this did no serious damage, and this was the last.
It was of course impossible, while thus running the gauntlet, to put our hostages ashore, and I could only explain to them that they must thank their own friends for their inevitable detention. I was by no means proud of their forlorn appearance, and besought Colonel Hawley to take them off my hands; but he was sending no flags of truce at that time, and liked their looks no better than I did. So I took them to Port Royal, where they were afterwards sent safely across the lines. Our men were pleased at taking them back with us, as they had already said, regretfully, "S'pose we leave dem Secesh at Fernandina, General Saxby won't see 'em,"—as if they were some new natural curiosity, which indeed they were. One soldier further suggested the expediency of keeping them permanently in camp, to be used as marks for the guns of the relieved guard every morning. But this was rather an ebullition of fancy than a sober proposition.
Against these levities I must put a piece of more tragic eloquence, which I took down by night on the steamer's deck from the thrilling harangue of Corporal Adam Allston, one of our most gifted prophets, whose influence over the men was unbounded. "When I heard," he said, "de bombshell a-screamin' troo de woods like de Judgment Day, I said to myself, 'If my head was took off to-night, dey couldn't put my soul in de torments, perceps [except] God was my enemy!' And when de rifle-bullets came whizzin' across de deck, I cried aloud, 'God help my congregation! Boys, load and fire!'"
I must pass briefly over the few remaining days of our cruise. At Fernandina we met the Planter, which had been successful on her separate expedition, and had destroyed extensive salt-works at Crooked River, under charge of the energetic Captain Trowbridge, efficiently aided by Captain Rogers. Our commodities being in part delivered at Fernandina, our decks being full, coal nearly out, and time up, we called once more at St. Simon's Sound, bringing away the remainder of our railroad-iron, with some which the naval officers had previously disinterred, and then steamed back to Beaufort. Arriving there at sunrise (February 2, 1863), I made my way with Dr. Rogers to General Saxton's bedroom, and laid before him the keys and shackles of the slave-prison, with my report of the good conduct of the men,—as Dr. Rogers remarked, a message from heaven and another from hell.
Slight as this expedition now seems among the vast events of the war, the future student of the newspapers of that day will find that it occupied no little space in their columns, so intense was the interest which then attached to the novel experiment of employing black troops. So obvious, too, was the value, during this raid, of their local knowledge and their enthusiasm, that it was impossible not to find in its successes new suggestions for the war. Certainly I would not have consented to repeat the enterprise with the bravest white troops, leaving Corporal Sutton and his mates behind, for I should have expected to fail. For a year after our raid the Upper St. Mary's remained unvisited, till in 1864 the large force with which we held Florida secured peace upon its banks; then Mrs. A. took the oath of allegiance, the Government bought her remaining lumber, and the John Adams again ascended with a detachment of my men under Lieutenant Parker, and brought a portion of it to Fernandina. By a strange turn of fortune, Corporal Sutton (now Sergeant) was at this time in jail at Hilton Head, under sentence of court-martial for an alleged act of mutiny,—an affair in which the general voice of our officers sustained him and condemned his accusers, so that he soon received a full pardon, and was restored in honor to his place in the regiment, which he has ever since held.
Nothing can ever exaggerate the fascinations of war, whether on the largest or smallest scale. When we settled down into camp-life again, it seemed like a butterfly's folding its wings to re-enter the chrysalis. None of us could listen to the crack of a gun without recalling instantly the sharp shots that spilled down from the bluffs of the St. Mary's, or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen by night without recalling the sounds which startled us on the Field of the Hundred Pines. The memory of our raid was preserved in the camp by many legends of adventure, growing vaster and more incredible as time wore on,—and by the morning appeals to the surgeon of some veteran invalids, who could now cut off all reproofs and suspicions with "Doctor, I's been a sickly pusson eber since de expeditious." But to me the most vivid remembrancer was the flock of sheep which we had "lifted." The Post Quartermaster discreetly gave us the charge of them, and they rilled a gap in the landscape and in the larder,—which last had before presented one unvaried round of impenetrable beef. Mr. Obabiah Oldbuck, when he decided to adopt a pastoral life, and assumed the provisional name of Thyrsis, never looked upon his flocks and herds with more unalloyed contentment than I upon that fleecy family. I had been familiar, in Kansas, with the metaphor by which the sentiments of an owner were credited to his property, and had heard of a proslavery colt and an antislavery cow. The fact that these sheep were but recently converted from "Se-cesh" sentiments was their crowning charm. Methought they frisked and fattened in the joy of their deliverance from the shadow of Mrs. A.'s slave-jail, and gladly contemplated translation into mutton-broth for sick or wounded soldiers. The very slaves who once, perchance, were sold at auction with yon aged patriarch of the flock, had now asserted their humanity, and would devour him as hospital rations. Meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet without a crook, and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy,—those sheep-stealers of less elevated aims,—when I met in my daily rides these wandering trophies of our wider wanderings.