United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At last, time brought relief, and after many months of weary waiting, hoping, watching, the opportunity was at hand for Leah to start in pursuit of her husband. Committed to the care of a kind-hearted man, himself the captain of a blockade-runner, the anxious wife hoped to reach the shores of her native State in safety.
"I believe there is another steamer over there; and, if there is, it must be the Dauphine." "What of her?" asked Christy anxiously. "She is a steam-yacht of four hundred tons, and the fastest steamer in these waters. They have been fitting her up for the war, though I don't know whether she is to be a man-of-war or a blockade-runner." "What makes you think it is she?"
The stranger was watched closely through marine glasses, and finally decided to be a blockade-runner trying to make the port; and the "Hatteras" immediately set out in pursuit. This was just what Capt. Semmes desired.
At rare intervals some daring blockade-runner brought a budget of Southern newspapers, or an enterprising correspondent succeeded in transmitting a dispatch from Richmond. But such glimpses of the situation within the cordon did little more than tantalise. The news was generally belated, and had often been long discounted by more recent events.
One of the strangest experiences of all was that of the captain of a blockade-runner putting in to Wilmington one bitter cold night, when the snow was blowing in clouds, and the fingers of the men at the wheel and the sailors on watch were frostbitten.
"I don't keep them, for they are now in the employ of the government, though they still report to me, and we use the system adopted some two years ago." "What is it this time, father?" asked Christy, his curiosity as well as his patriotism excited by this time at the prospect of capturing a Confederate man-of-war, or even a blockade-runner.
Wassaw Sound in Georgia was the scene of a desperate duel on the seventeenth of June, when the Union monitor Weehawken captured the old blockade-runner Fingal, which had been converted into the new Confederate ram Atlanta. The third week in August witnessed another bombardment of Charleston, this time on a larger scale, for a longer time, and by military as well as naval means.
Neither he nor his men were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection of my person and baggage. When I declined to satisfy him, he became exceedingly witty not to say sarcastic.
Those dreadful night runs on the way down Marcy always thought of with a shiver, and now he had to go through with them again; and one would surely have ended his career as a blockade-runner, for a while at least, had it not been for the credulity or stupidity of a Union naval captain.
"Oh, yes, sir; we'll get along all right," answered Marcy, who was very much afraid that the officer would ask him how he had got hurt. "Seen anything of that blockade-runner since we left?"
Word Of The Day