IT was Christmas morning, and very early on Christmas morning, for the sun, like a great ball of burnished copper, was just rising above the mist that hung low along the eastern horizon, gilding with the first flush of dawn the cold, gray clouds and shimmering on the crest of the waves that rippled in the freshening breeze.
Under all sail and braced close to the wind, a war-ship is standing in for the land, where a long stretch of low sand hills is broken by the entrance to a bay, an ugly line of breakers making across; while a mile beyond, the tall, white shaft of a half-ruined lighthouse is visible.
The vessel is a clipper-built bark, her long, tapering masts heavily sparred and spreading a cloud of canvas. The lines of her hull are so fine, her bow is so sharp, and her run so clean moulded that she could evidently show great speed were she not so closely hauled. As it is, although every thread of canvas is drawing, the bowlines are hauled well out and the weather leeches of the topsails shiver as the ship rises and falls on the strong easterly swell; for she is kept almost in the wind’s eye by the old quartermaster at the wheel, under the watchful conning of the officer of the deck.
Near one of the after guns stands an officer looking through his marine glass toward the southward, steadying himself, meanwhile, by leaning against the weather mizzen rigging.
“Well, sir, what do your young eyes make of her?” I queried.
“It is certainly the Connecticut, and she is making the best of her way down the coast, under steam and sail.”
“Just as I thought! Confound it, why couldn’t we have been a couple of hours earlier! Well, Mr. Bailey, it seems pretty certain that we have lost the supply steamer, as we did our blockade runner last night, by being a little too late!”
“That will make it a very dismal Christmas for us, sir.”
“I know it, Mr. Bailey, and I am as much disappointed as you possibly can be. I was anxiously expecting some important private letters by the Connecticut, to say nothing of the necessity of stocking up my mess stores. I fancy that you are not much better off in that respect in the wardroom.”
“Better off, sir! Why we are down to our very last can of tomatoes, and that, with salt beef, is very likely to be our Christmas dinner to-day in the wardroom, with possibly a plum duff as a wind-up. It’s simply awful, sir!”
“I am heartily sorry for you, Mr. Bailey, and I must see if my steward cannot rake up something among my stores to help out your table a bit. I shall expect you and the doctor to dine with me to-day, however. But we must be getting in very close to our anchorage, I think. Yes, there is our buoy just off the lee bow. We shall fetch it nicely on this tack. Call all hands, sir, at once, and bring the ship to an anchor.”
The order was passed, the boatswain’s call rang out sharp and clear, the boatswain’s mates took up the refrain in a minor key, and above the notes of the whistles the hoarse cry, “All hands bring ship to anchor, ahoy!” resounded through the berth deck. Responsive to the call, the quiet ship was soon alive with men hastening to their stations.
“Stand by halyards, sheets, clewlines, and downhauls fore and aft!” shouted the executive officer through his trumpet. “Lower away; let go; clew up, haul down!” There was a whizzing of ropes, a flapping of canvas, and in a moment the yards were down and the sails were hanging in festoons.
“Away, topgallant and royal yard men! Lay aloft, topmen and lower yard men! Trice up booms; lay out; furl!”
A hundred men sprang into the rigging as they were called away; each yard swarmed with them as they rapidly furled the sails; and as the ship lost her headway, the anchor was let go, the crew quickly laid down from aloft, and the beautiful ship that but a few minutes before had been alive under a cloud of canvas was quietly swinging to her anchor, with sails trimly furled, bunts triced up, yards squared by lifts and braces, and no man to be seen above the hammock nettings save the lookout at each masthead and the commanding officer, who from the poop had been critically watching this evolution of “a flying-moor,” and now turned to express his satisfaction to the executive officer, who was turning the trumpet over to the officer of the deck.
“Very neatly done, indeed, Mr. Bailey! We couldn’t have beaten that in the old Richmond with three times our crew! Men who show the result of your excellent training so smartly as this at least deserve a Christmas dinner. Have my gig called away immediately after breakfast, and I will go on shore and see if I cannot knock over a bullock. I don’t believe any of us will object to a bit of roast beef, and I shall be glad to make a little reconnaissance at the same time.”
My predecessor on this station had been Captain Robert Wade, in command of the United States bark Arthur. As she was at Pensacola when I took command of the Anderson, I went on board of her one day to learn something about my new station.
“Well, Kelson,” said Captain Wade in response to my queries, “it is a God-forsaken coast, and I am not sorry to have got away from it myself. You will need to anchor in about ten fathoms, say three miles from shore; for when the northers come along next winter you will very likely have to slip, and then you will require plenty of sea room to work off shore.”
“Any inhabitants about the bay?”
“I never saw any. There are some half-wild cattle on Matagorda Island, and I used to go on shore, occasionally, and shoot one for the messes. It’s a pretty lonely spot, I assure you!”
That was about all that I had been able to learn, in advance, of the stretch of coast I was supposed to take care of; and up to this blessed Christmas Day, now nearly two weeks, no signs whatever of life in the neighborhood of the bay had been discovered, although a bright lookout had been constantly maintained from the mastheads of my ship.
Consequently I felt that I was taking every reasonable precaution when I ordered my boat’s crew to wear their cutlasses, and had half a dozen Sharps’ rifles put in the stern sheets, for I knew that we would be more than a match for any possible bushwhackers, although I had no reason to expect any opposition. My surgeon had gladly accepted an invitation to join me, and soon after breakfast we shoved off from the ship on our quest for beef.
Across the mouth of the bay the breakers made a line of white-capped surf; but acting on instructions I had received from Captain Wade, I watched for a heavy roller, and then we gave way and went in with it, keeping the boat’s stern to the sea, and thus crossed the bar with only a slight drenching.
About a mile, as I remember it, from the bar stood the lighthouse. Early in the war the rebels, in accordance with their general policy, had removed the lantern, and had then attempted to blow up the tower; but the sturdy shaft had defied their efforts, and, barring a ragged gap in one side, it was, as yet, practically intact.
Landing a few rods from the lighthouse, I left the boat beached, with orders to the crew not to stray away and to keep their arms in readiness for use. Then, accompanied by the doctor and my coxswain, I strolled up to the tower, intending to obtain from the top a lookout over the surrounding country.
But this I soon found was no easy task, for the rebels had blown out the lower iron steps from the inside: and it was only by using considerable effort that we at last succeeded in accomplishing our object, and only then after pulling down in the struggle two of the steps still remaining in place. However, at last we scrambled up and made our way to the balcony above the lantern-room.
From this point the view was very extended; and unslinging my marine glass, I, sailor-like, turned first to look at the beautiful picture my noble ship presented gracefully riding at her anchors, her tall masts tapering skyward, the ensign and pennant drooping idly from the peak and masthead in the light air, the guns peering from her side being the only thing to indicate that she was not some “peaceful merchant caravel.”
“She is certainly a beauty, doctor. You don’t often see a prettier craft, and she is as good as she is bonny, and carries a swift pair of heels into the bargain! But what are you looking at over there so intently? It is easy to see that you are not a sailor! Have you got a bullock in range over those hills?”
While speaking I turned my glass in the direction where the doctor was looking so earnestly, and the sight presented almost took away my breath, and for an instant I was speechless.
On our right, over the sheltering sand hill which had heretofore concealed them from our view, was a rebel camp in plain sight, into which, as I looked down from the tower, it seemed to me that I could have cast a stone!
Two score dingy shelter tents and two or three larger marquee tents indicated the presence of at least a hundred men, while before one of the large tents were two brass field-pieces!
There was no perceptible stir in the camp, and for a moment I hoped that we might not have been observed, and that possibly there was yet time for us to escape unnoticed from this trap into which I had so unwittingly cast myself.
But the silence and quiet were delusive; for as I looked again more carefully, I saw that men were stealing over the sand hills toward my boat, which they doubtless hoped to capture by surprise!
We have been told by those who have been revived, after coming well-nigh within the gates of death by drowning, that in the few agonizing moments before they became unconscious, a thousand recollections of the life they were leaving flashed through their minds. So now I recalled Wade’s words when he had told me that this island was uninhabited, and cursed myself for having trusted to them. I thought of the report of the affair Mr. Bailey, soon to be commander in my place, would make to the admiral. What business had I, the captain, out of my ship, when a junior officer could have been sent in to make a reconnaissance, if indeed it were needed at all! And what sad news to be sent home to my young wife, for a Texas prison pen was but a shade better than death!
But I was aroused by the doctor’s question, “Hadn’t we better be getting out of this, captain?” and coming to a realizing sense of the necessity for immediate action, I made quick time in getting down to the ground.
The boat’s crew were amusing themselves by shying stones at a bottle they had set up for a mark, in utter unconsciousness of their imminent danger, and they were evidently greatly surprised at the rapid manner with which we came down to the boat.
“Into the boat at once, men!” I cried, “and give way for your lives! The rebs are almost on top of us!”
The doctor and I climbed into the stern sheets as the men sprang into their places; and as they bent to their oars, the rebels, seeing that they were discovered, poured over the sand hills with exultant yells. Fortunately we got the boat well in motion before they opened fire, and their shots flew wild, save one that buried itself in the stern of the boat close to the rudder head.
“They are bringing the fieldpiece over the hill, captain!” said the doctor, who was watching the enemy.
“Give way, lads! Make her jump, if you don’t want to sleep in prison to-night!” I shouted, keeping the boat as close over to the port shore as it was possible without fouling the oars.
Bang! and a shell came shrieking through the air so close to our heads that, as it burst, a fragment cut a slice out of the starboard gunwale of the boat, between the stern sheets and the after oar. At the same time the stroke oarsman was wounded in the left arm by another bit of shell. But the brave fellow did not abandon his oar or lose his stroke; and the doctor, tearing a piece from his own shirt sleeve, bound it about the wounded arm and stanched the blood, without moving the man from his seat.
“They are waving us to come in, captain,” said the doctor, as he finished binding up the man’s arm and took a look astern.
“Well, we won’t oblige them,” I replied. “Give them a sight of our ensign, doctor, so that they may know for certain who we are. It will not be the first time they have fired on that flag!”
The doctor reached behind me, as I steered, and placed the staff of the boat flag in its socket, and “Old Glory” streamed out behind us as we flew through the water.
This brought another shell, which passed close astern of the boat, missing us by so little that we all held our breath as it came screaming toward us. But we, meanwhile, were not tarrying. Our light boat was dashing along, and her speed evidently disconcerted the hurried aim of our adversaries, whose next shots were wide of the mark, although quite near enough to make their singing very unpleasant music.
But another and an entirely unexpected danger now confronted us; for as we neared the lower point of the bay, where we expected to be out of range, men were seen launching from the beach a boat somewhat larger than our own, with the evident purpose of cutting us off before we could reach the bar.
Under ordinary circumstances, or single-handed, I should not have objected to this prospective contest, for I felt very sure that, boat for boat, we should be more than a match for them; but if we stopped to fight, the artillerymen, who were now dragging their pieces down the beach, would get us in range, and a single well-directed shot from the gun would easily have put us hors de combat. So that I viewed this new complication as very far from being an agreeable incident.
But before the soldiers got their boat afloat, which they were going about in a very lubberly manner, we were startled by the report of a heavy gun from outside, and a rifle shell came hurtling high above our heads and landed in the sand very near our pursuers. A second shot followed almost immediately, which to our delight exploded in the very midst of the men, capsizing the piece and dispersing the gunners in a very summary manner!
“Hurrah! doctor, the Anderson is talking back! There she is, God bless her!” and as I spoke the dear old barkey appeared in plain sight under topsails, courses, and jibs, right abreast of the entrance to the bay, and much closer in to the bar than she had any business to be, and the Parrott rifle rang out again, landing a shell in such very close proximity to the party who were getting the boat afloat that they at once abandoned their work.
“Give way now, boys; we’ll go through the breakers if we have to go through bottom side up! Our friends will pick us up.” And we dashed into the surf. The boat rose almost on end, then came down and touched bottom, but at the same instant another roller lifted her, the men bent to their oars sturdily, and in a minute more we were through the surf and safe in the quiet water outside the bar.
As we emerged from the rollers the Anderson luffed up in the wind, her main topsail was braced aback, and the crew sprang into the rigging and gave three hearty cheers, which must have been very depressing to our would-be captors.
We were received on board with a warm greeting that set all discipline at defiance for a few minutes, and then the usual calm routine of a well-disciplined ship of war settled down, and all excitement was repressed as we hoisted in the gig and made sail on the other tack for our anchorage.
My honest steward’s welcome, when I went down to my cabin, was none the less hearty because in failing to bring off the coveted bullock I had compelled him to serve me a very meagre dinner; and as I sat down to the simple meal he had provided, I could not but be grateful for my very narrow escape from taking my Christmas dinner that day in a Texas prison pen!