VTHE BLOCKADE-RUNNERA Dangerous Prize
A Dangerous Prize
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“NOW, Lieutenant, the yarn,” said I, as I settled myself comfortably. A heavy sea was running; night had fallen; we were off watch, and snugly stowed between decks, with our legs under the gun-room table, and—jollier still—Lieutenant Bracetaut had promised a yarn. He looked musingly at the oscillating lantern above our heads, and then made a beginning:
“It was not in these days of iron pots, cheese-boxes, and steam-engines, you must know,” said he; “but on the dear old frigateFlorida—requiescat in pace!—without her mate before a stiff breeze, and with more rats in her hold than in a North Sea whaler. We were the flag-ship of the African squadron.Prize-money was scarce, and the days frightfully hot; when just as the day dropped at the close of September, we were overjoyed to hear tidings of—”
“All hands on deck if you want a share in this prize!” bawled the boatswain down the companionway; and we ungraciously tumbled up, snapping Bracetaut’s yarn without compunction.
“Where is she?”
“What is she?”
“I don’t see her.”
“There she is to the sou’west,” said the cockswain, pointing with his spy-glass.
“By Jove, a steamer, too!” cried Bracetaut, delightedly.
“TheGreat Eastern, stuffed with cotton to her scuppers,” suggested Jerry Bloom, commencing a hornpipe; and every one else had some guess as to the character of the strange craft.
CHASING A BLOCKADE-RUNNER(From a contemporary picture inHarper’s Weekly)
“Bracetaut is right,” said the Captain of thePetrel, who had been studying her intently with his telescope; “she’s a steamer, and a big ’un. But she’s not coming out;she’s making for the Lights with her best foot foremost.”
We were glad to hear it; for even cotton could be foregone for the sake of English rifles, hospital stores, and army stuffs. We cracked on more steam, unfurled the top-gallants, and made all preparations for a short chase. We had been to Philadelphia for coal, and were still fifty knots from our old blockading station on the North Carolina coast, to which we were returning. There was a heavy sea from the tempest of the day before; but the sky was cloudless and the moon unusually bright, and our craft was the swiftest in the squadron; so that, with so much sea-room, we had little doubt of overhauling the stranger before she could reach the protecting guns of Fort Macon. A mere speck at first, the object of our attention grew rapidly bigger as we sped on under the extra head of steam and the straining top-gallants. She enlarged against the sky until she grew as big as a whale, and in a few moments we distinguished the column of black smoke which her low chimneys trailedagainst the sky; but she seemed to have little canvas stretched. Indeed, the gale was yet so strong that any extensive spread of sail was imprudent.
“See what you make of her, Bracetaut,” said the Captain, handing his telescope to the weather-worn seaman. “I would be sure that she’s none of our own.”
“Clyde-built all over,” mused the Lieutenant, with his eye to the tube. “No one but a Cockney could have planted her masts; and her jib has the Bristol cut. She sees you and is doing her best. I doubt if you catch her.”
“We’ll see about that,” retorted the skipper. “Let out the studdin’ sails! trim the jib!” he roared through his trumpet. “I’ll spread every rag if we scrape the sky! More head if possible, Jones,” he added; and the engineer went below to see what could be done.
The gale was strong, and her head of steam was already great; but we soon seemed to leap from crest to crest under the stimulus of replenished fires, and the masts fairly bowedbeneath their press of canvas. Everybody was agog with excitement, and half the seamen were in the rigging gazing ahead and speculating as to the vessel and her contents.
“Try her with the big bow-chaser, Captain,” suggested the Lieutenant; and the order was immediately given.
Boom! went the huge piece, as we quivered on the summit of a lofty wave, and the rushing bolt flashed a phosphorescent light from a dozen crests ere its course was lost in the distance.
“No, go! it’s a good three miles,” growled Captain Butler, measuring the interval once more with his glass.
“Let me try,” said Bracetaut, quietly taking his stand behind the gun, which was now being charged anew, and carefully adjusting the screws.
Again the sullen thunder spouted from the port, and we marked the ball by its path of fire.
“Gone again,” grumbled the skipper. “We’re paving the floor of the sea with—Ha!”For an instant the messenger had vanished like its predecessor; then, far away to the south, there sprang a fountain of spray—its last dip in the brine—and the mizzen-mast of the stranger snapped short off at the cross-trees, and dragged a cloud of useless canvas down her shrouds.
“Brave shot!” exclaimed the Captain. “Try again, Lieutenant.”
“‘Try, try again,’” sang that limb of a middy, Jerry Bloom, renewing his hornpipe.
But the rigging of the stranger suddenly grew black with men, the broken spars were cleared away as by magic, another sail puffed out broadly from her foretop to make up for the vanished mizzen-mast, and even as we gazed a strain of band-music came floating over the sea, with the “Bonny blue flag” for its burden.
“She’s telling her name,” said Bracetaut, laughing.
“Yes, but she’s going to kick us,” cried Jerry, as a long tongue of flame leaped from the stranger’s stern; and the rolling thunder of her gun came to us almost simultaneouslywith the ball, which whistled through our tops, letting down a heavy splinter on the cockswain’s head, who dropped like a dead man, but was only stunned.
It was evident that the stranger was plucky, and not to be taken alive. We still worked on her with our bow-gun, seldom doing much damage, but with the best of intentions; while she kicked off the point of our bowsprit with provoking ease, and burned an ugly hole through our maintop-sail.
“By Jingo! she’s growing saucy,” said Captain Butler. “Now let me have a shy;” and grasping the piece with a practised hand, he swiftly adjusted it.
“Huzza! I told you so! Clean through her poop!”
Sure enough, the shot struck her after-bulwarks, and must have played hob with the chandeliers in the cabin.
“Just wait till we can give her a broadside,” added the winger of the bolt, rubbing his hands good-humoredly.
“We mustn’t wait too long, then,” saidthe cool Lieutenant, “for I see the Lookout lights. In half an hour we shall be under the guns of Fort Macon.”
He pointed over the side as he spoke, far down the western verge, to a faint, lurid glimmering scarcely brighter than the many stars that surrounded it, but with the hazy lustre which there was no mistaking.
“The rebels are reported to have destroyed the lanterns,” said I, suggestively.
“Don’t you believe it, my boy,” replied the old sailor. “They know when to douse them and when to light a British skipper to their nest.”
The chase had now lasted between two and three hours, and the fort at Cape Fear could not be more than twelve miles to our lee. We were still two miles from the stranger, and the chances were momently lessening of overhauling her in time, unless we should succeed in materially disabling her, while our own risk of becoming crippled from her well-directed stern-shots was very great. If the wind had been light the shots in our rigging would have checked our speed but slightly;but the bracing gale that had us in its teeth lent us half our speed, and an unlucky shot in our cross-trees might be irretrievable.
“There! there! we have it now! Was there ever such luck?” cried the Captain, despondently. And our main-sail came down with a rush as he spoke, every one flying from the splinters of the mast, which was severed like a pipe-stem.
We all looked glum enough at this mishap, and began to consider the prize as a might-have-been. But the Captain determined on a last effort, and ordered a broadside volley, though the distance, a mile and a half at least, made success extremely doubtful. The ship rounded to handsomely. The ports were open, twenty cannon were already loaded and manned, and, at the given signal, a long sheet of flame leaped from the side, and the noble frigate roared and quivered to her keelson. Another instant and a wild huzza swelled upward from our crowded deck; for the broadside was a success. The entire rigging of the stranger seemed in ruins; her bowsprit was trailing in the sea; and we coulddistinguish another ugly smash in her stern, which must have come very near destroying her precious flukes. Of course the prospect was now far better than before, but still by no means certain, as it was questionable whether we were not almost equally disabled in the rigging, and the rapidity with which the damaged tops of the stranger were mended and cleared away seemed miraculous, though she now gave over firing, apparently bent on safety only by sharp sailing.
New spars were already up on our own main-mast, and, with a clew or two on the mizzen-shrouds, and the use of the after-braces, with double duty on the mizzen-top-gallant spars, our main-sail was again aloft, with cheering indications that we were gaining fast. In fifteen minutes we had so sensibly diminished the interval between us and our prey that we ceased firing. But we were over-confident. The lanterns of Cape Lookout were now left far away on our starboard quarter, and every forward furlong we made was so much nearer to the formidable fort. Just then a faint flash,like the horizon glimmer of summer lightning, shone above the waters far beyond the ship we were pursuing, and a hardly heard but ominous boom told us that the old sea-dragon, Fort Macon, was not sleeping in the moonlight. We now renewed our pelting of the stranger with further damage to her tops. Whereupon she veered for Shackleford Shoals, with the evident intention of beaching herself if unable to get under the fort. Another quarter of an hour and we were within long range of the heavy coast-guns of the fortress, which seemed to understand the state of the case perfectly, for shells began to drop around us briskly. And now the great breakers of the sandy coast were plainly discernible on the starboard, tossing their white plumes high above the beach. Here and there a bluff rose from the monotone of sand; and the Devil’s Skillet—a dangerous reef—was boiling white a little lower down.
Shackleford Shoals is a low, narrow sand-bank, about twenty miles in length. Its lower extremity comes within three miles, ata rough guess, of the Borden Banks, or Shoals, on the easternmost point of which the fort is situated. The bank is everywhere treacherous, but especially at this southern point, where the danger of the shoals is hidden by apparently deep water. And now as we neared our expected prey, she made a bold push for this inlet; but as we dashed in between her and the fort, regardless of the latter’s continuous firing, she altered her course, and steered head-on for the fatal breakers.
“She’s bent on suicide!” said Jerry, who then ran below for his pistols, as the Captain ordered the boats to be manned.
“Has she struck?”
“No—yes—there she goes!”
Sure enough, she had grounded and slightly heeled over, but in such deep water that the soft sand of the shoals would not hold her long. Two of our boats were manned, with our beloved Lieutenant as commander of the expedition, and I was in his boat. We pushed off with some difficulty, on account of the heavy sea. As we did so we saw the boatsof the blockade-runner also lowered, and pulling inside for the inlet. The rats were leaving the crib.
“You can get her off if you try, Bracetaut. Throw over everything to lighten her,” was the parting injunction of Captain Butler, and as we pulled away he hauled his ship out of range of the fort. It was rather uncomfortable the way the shells ducked and plunged around us, or burst above our heads, but we pulled away for the prize. Our boat was the last to reach the ship—a first-class iron propeller, of great tonnage, and clipper-built. As the crew of the advanced boat climbed up her sides several crashes made us aware that the fort was turning her guns against the vessel, to deprive us of the plunder.
“And hot-shot at that. Listen!” said Bracetaut to me; when the fizzing sound of the plunging hot-shot was plainly distinguishable.
Our boat was within a rod of the prize when we perceived the men who had already boarded her jumping hastily over the bulwarks,dropping into their boat, and pushing off, as if something unusual was to pay. One had been left behind. It was the little middy, Jerry Bloom, who now appeared unconcernedly leaning over the side and coolly awaiting the Lieutenant’s orders.
“What’s her cargo?” bellowed Bracetaut through his trumpet.
“Powder!” sang back the shrill tones of the New World Casabianca, and siz! siz! went the plunging red-hot shot; and crash! crash! they went against the floating magazine with frightful precision.
“Jump for your life!” roared the Lieutenant to Jerry. “Back-water, you lubbers! back, for your lives!”
We saw the midshipman join his palms over his head and leap from the gunwale of the fated ship. Scarcely had his slender figure cut the brine before a number of sharp reports were heard—then a long, deep, volcanic rumbling, that swelled into a terrific thunder, deafened our ears; a dozen columns of blood-red flame shot up to the stars; and we saw the deck and majestic spars of thedoomed blockade-runner spring aloft in fragments! A huge black mass descended with a fearful splash a yard from our bows—the long stern-chaser going to the bottom—the sides of the powder-ship yawned wide open an instant, filled with fire, then disappeared, the flames dying out. The sea was ploughed around us by the falling fragments of deck and spar, and the glorious steamer was no more!