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Updated: May 7, 2025
Hastily seizing the wheel, he turned her head down the river again, when the battery opened upon them, and a storm of shells plunged into the water and whistled through the air about the boat. Only one struck her, and that passed through one of the smoke-stacks, and bursting, demolished part of the roof of the pilothouse.
The smoke-stacks and wheel-houses were riddled by the bullets of the Confederate sharp-shooters. The decks were covered with rubbish of all kinds, and here and there was a fissure that told of the bursting of some Confederate shell. The paint was blistered, and peeling off, from the effects of the cotton-fire through which the fleet had dashed.
Alongside her pier, white as a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed and stoked, the Roumania reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose tapering toward the blue harbor and the blue billows beyond. Within the narrow confines of a first-deck stateroom, piled round with luggage and its double-decker berths freshly made up, Mrs.
The passengers were huddled about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were wrapped in wintry costumes and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless gale and the drenching spray. The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud standing up out of the dull mists of the sea.
From the open ports, the muzzles of what appeared to be heavy rifles protruded; though the guns that seemed so formidable were really only logs of wood. Two high smoke-stacks, built of empty pork-barrels, rose from the centre of this strange craft; and at the bottom of each stack was an iron pot, in which was a heap of tar and oakum that sent forth volumes of black smoke when lighted.
The guests at the banquet went off to the ships, from the smoke-stacks of which the black smoke was pouring out, as if to emphasize the reality of the departure. All manner of courtesies were exchanged, but finally the passengers were all on board of the Blanche and Guardian-Mother.
We put on life-preservers, and sat waiting until daylight, expecting every moment the vessel would split. As soon as it was light enough, we went upon deck, and saw the sailors cut away the masts and smoke-stacks, which went over the side of the ship. The water dashed over the deck, so that we were obliged to go below.
To the left lay Washington Square, full of somnolent Italians and roller-skating children; to the right was a spectacle which never failed to intrigue Ginger, the high smoke-stacks of a Cunard liner moving slowly down the river, sticking up over the house-tops as if the boat was travelling down Ninth Avenue. To-day there were four of these funnels, causing Ginger to deduce the Mauritania.
By this time the "little day" had begun to whiten the eastern sky; a pallid light was diffused; I could see westward down to the main harbor, beside the heart of the city. The sails and smoke-stacks of great ships were visible, all passing out to sea. I wished that we were there. Here in front of us the water seemed shallower. It was probably only a tributary or backwater of the main stream.
Peter began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her. At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat. A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served for smoke-stacks.
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