Nothing could have suited Jack better than this, for he had become attached to the gunboat and her officers; so it was soon settled that he was to lie still on his bed and be carried to Brooklyn. For more than a month he lay there without seeing anything of the great city on either side of him; and the Alleghany was already under orders to sail for Key West before he was able to venture on deck with a crutch under each arm. There were delays in getting away, so by the time the gunboat was steaming down the coast Jack was walking slowly about her deck with a cane, and the color was in his cheeks again, and the old sparkle in his eyes. He was in hopes of finding a schooner at Key West that would carry him to Apalachicola; but he was not to see the old town again for many a day.
The Alleghany was a little below Hatteras, when she sighted a Confederate blockade-runner, and she immediately gave chase. But, much to the surprise of the officers, this blockade-runner did not run away, as they generally did. She was much larger than the Alleghany, and well manned and armed, and she preferred to stay and fight. Almost before he knew it Jack was in the midst of a hot naval battle. The two vessels were soon close together, and there was such a thunder of guns and such a smother of smoke that he does not pretend to remember exactly what happened. But after it was all over, and the blockade-runner was a prize, with the stars and stripes flying from her stern, Jack walked as straight as anybody down to the little hospital where he had spent so many weeks.
His mother would hardly have known him as he stepped into the hospital and waited till the surgeon had time to take a big splinter from his left arm.
"Where's your cane, young man?" the surgeon asked, when Jack's turn came.
"I don't know, sir!" Jack replied, surprised to find himself standing without it. "I must have forgotten all about it. I saw one of the gunners fall, and I took his place, and that's all I remember, sir, except seeing the enemy strike her colors."
That action made Jack a Midshipman in the United States navy, and gave him a share in the prize-money, and a year later he was an Ensign. For special gallantry in action in Mobile Bay he was made a Lieutenant before the close of the war, and in the long years since then he has risen more slowly to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander.
