The city of New Orleans surrendered to Flag-officer Farragut, who held it under his guns until General Butler came up with his soldiers to take it off his hands; and then he kept on up the river with a portion of his victorious fleet to effect a junction with the Mississippi squadron at Vicksburg, while the remainder of his vessels, one of which was the Harriet Lane, sailed away to hoist the flag of the Union over the port of Galveston, and break up the blockade running that was going on there. This force appeared before Galveston in May, but no earnest efforts were made to compel a surrender until October; and even then no serious attempt was made to take and hold the city. The commanding naval officer was content to establish a close blockade of the port, and nothing could have suited Jack Gray better. Galveston was a noted place for blockade runners, and it was seldom indeed that one escaped when the Lane sighted and started in pursuit of her. Every capture meant prize money.

“We made the most of the money that was made off that port last summer, but of course we didn’t get it all ourselves,” explained Jack. "If you are cruising by yourself and make a capture while another ship is within signalling distance of you, the law says you must divide with that ship, although she may not have done a thing to help you take the prize; but if you belong to a squadron, every vessel in it has a share in every prize you make. Fortunately for us there were but four ships in our squadron off Galveston, and every time we took a prize somebody would sing:

Things went on in this satisfactory way until General Banks took command at New Orleans in December, and sent a regiment to assist the naval forces at Galveston, it being a part of his duty to “direct the military movements against the rebellion in the State of Texas.” Not more than a third of the regiment had arrived, the rest being on its way, when the rebel general Magruder, who had just been appointed to the chief command in Texas, formed a bold plan for the recapture of the city, and carried it out successfully on New Year’s morning. He had six thousand men and several cotton-clad vessels to help him, and of course the battle could end in but one way.

Galveston stands upon a long, narrow island in the bay, and is connected with the mainland by a bridge two miles in length, built upon piles. This bridge ought to have been destroyed, but it wasn’t, and when Magruder charged across it with his six regiments, he confidently expected to sweep away like so many cobwebs the little handful of Federals standing at the other end; but he didn’t. Aided by a hot fire from the Harriet Lane and Westfield, they repulsed every charge he made, and no doubt would have continued to do so if two of his best vessels, the Neptune and Bayou City, protected by cotton bales piled twenty feet high upon their low decks, so that at a distance they looked like common cotton transports, and manned by a regiment of sharpshooters, had not hastened to his aid.

“We had our own way with the troops on the bridge until those two boats came dashing down at us, and then things began to look squally,” said Jack. “We steamed up to meet them, but it wasn’t long before we wished we hadn’t done it. We didn’t disable them with our bow-guns as we hoped to do, and, indeed, it was as much as a man’s life was worth to handle the guns at all, for the sharpshooters behind the cotton bales sent their bullets over our deck like hailstones. One time I grabbed hold of a train tackle with four other men to help run out the No. 2 gun, and the next I knew I was standing there alone. The four had been shot dead, but I wasn’t touched. All this while the rebel boats were coming at us full speed, and the next thing I knew they struck us with terrible force, bow on, one on each side. But,” added Jack, with a chuckle of satisfaction, “one of them got hurt worse than we did. The Neptune was disabled by the shock, and grounded in shoal water; but the men on her were game to the last. They fought to win and shot to kill; for, no matter which way I looked, I saw somebody drop every minute.”

“And what became of the other boat?” inquired Rodney.

“The Bayou City? Oh, she drifted away, but rounded-to and came at us again, hitting us pretty near in the same place; but the second time she didn’t drift away. She made fast to and boarded us. When I saw those graybacks swarming over the hammock nettings, and heard that Captain Wainwright and most of the other officers had been killed, I knew I had to do something or go to prison; so I just took a header overboard through the nearest port and struck out for the Westfield, which was a mile or so astern, and trying to come to our aid.”

Jack was not quite correct when he said he “struck out,” after taking a header through the port. He turned on his back and floated, for he was afraid that if he showed any signs of life he would be discovered and picked off by some sharpshooter. He permitted the current to whirl him around now and then, so that he could keep his bearings and hold a straight course for the Westfield, but before he had floated half a mile, he discovered that he was making straight for as hot a place as that from which he had just escaped. The flagship Westfield had run hard and fast aground within easy range of a battery which the rebels had planted on the shore, and although two other gunboats came up and tried to drag her into deep water, she was being literally cut to pieces before Jack Gray’s eyes; and more than that, her commander was making preparations to abandon her to her fate.

“Then I began to look wild again, and took a sheer off to give the flagship plenty of room to blow up in,” said Jack. “Captain Renshaw, her commandant, was a regular, and I knew well enough that he would not leave his vessel in such shape that the rebels could fix her up and use her against us, though I was not prepared for what happened a few minutes later. While I was moving along with the current, not daring to swim lest I should attract the notice of some wide-awake sharpshooter, I saw Renshaw send off his men by the boat-load until at last there were but two boats left alongside the Westfield. One of these put off loaded to the water’s edge, but the other remained, and I knew it was waiting for Renshaw to fire the train he had laid to the magazine; and that made me sheer off a little farther, although I began swimming the best I knew how in the hope that one of the boats would wait for me to catch on behind. In a minute or two more Captain Renshaw came out, and that was the first and last I ever saw of him. He stepped into his boat, but before it had moved twenty feet away the flagship blew up, smashing the two small boats into kindling-wood and sending every man in them to kingdom come.”

No one else who was as close to the Westfield as Jack Gray was at that moment escaped with his life, and he did not come off unscathed. While he was gazing around him in a dazed sort of way, gasping for breath and utterly unable to realize what had happened, a piece of the Westfield’s wreck which had been blown high in air descended with frightful velocity, and barely missing his head struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder and shot down into the water out of sight. And it was but one of a score of such dangerous missiles which rained upon him during the next few seconds. They plunged into the water perilously near to him and splashed it in his face from all directions. The most of them were no bigger than the head they threatened to break, while others were as large as a barn door. At first Jack thought the safest place would be nearer the bottom of the river; but when he saw how some of the heaviest pieces of the wreck dove out of sight when they struck the water, he decided that he could not go deep enough to escape them, and that the best plan would be to look upward and try to dodge them when he saw that they were coming too close; but by the time he came to this conclusion and turned upon his back, the storm was over and the air above him was clear. It was the narrowest escape he had ever had, and Jack Gray had been in some tight places.

Having satisfied himself that he was no longer in danger of being knocked senseless by falling wreckage, Jack turned upon his face and struck out for the nearest gunboat, or rather tried to; for his right arm was almost useless. He could thrust it through the water in front of him, but when he endeavored to swim with it, it dropped to his side like a piece of lead.

“And that’s the way it felt for three or four days, although I was under good care all the time,” continued Jack. “I was picked up after I had floated and swum with one hand a distance of three miles, reported the loss of my vessel, and told what little I knew about the blowing up of the Westfield, and then I was glad to go into the hands of the doctor, for I found that I was worse hurt than I thought I was. But you may be sure I didn’t say so. If there is anything that is despised aboard ship it is a sojer, which is the name we give to men who can work and won’t, and so I kept on doing duty when I ought by rights to have been in my hammock. I pulled twenty miles on the night of the 11th of January to escape capture, and of course the exertion gave me a big set-back; but I haven’t got to that part of my story yet.”

Jack Gray watched and waited anxiously to hear from some of his shipmates, but not a word did he get from anybody; and this led him to believe that he was the only one of the Harriet Lane’s crew who escaped death or capture. The direct results of the fight were that the rebels, with very small loss to themselves, captured the Lane, caused the destruction of the flagship of the squadron, secured possession of two coal barges that were lying at the wharf and nearly four hundred prisoners; but “the indirect results were still more important.” The whole State of Texas came back under their flag, and blockade running went on as though it had never been interfered with at all. It was done principally by small schooners like Captain Beardsley’s Hattie, which took out cotton and brought back medicines, guns, ammunition, and cloth that was afterward made into uniforms for the Confederate soldiers. And the worst of it was that it was kept up to the end of the war. Of course word was sent to New Orleans at once, and Commodore Bell came down with a small fleet to shut up the port; but he brought no soldiers with him to hold the city, for General Banks couldn’t spare a single regiment. He had made up his mind to capture Port Hudson, and needed all the men he could get.

Among the vessels that came down with Commodore Bell was the Hatteras, the slowest old tub in the fleet, and much to his disgust Jack Gray was ordered aboard of her. The badge he wore on his arm showed that he had been a quartermaster on board the Lane, but he was transferred without any rating at all, it being optional with Captain Blake, the commander of the Hatteras, whether he would continue him as a quartermaster or put him before the mast. Jack had already served four months beyond the year for which he enlisted, but he made no complaint, although he had firmly resisted all efforts on the part of the Lane’s officers to induce him to re-enlist for three years or during the war.

“I might have had a commission as well as not,” said Jack, “for there wasn’t a watch officer aboard the Lane who could have passed a better examination than I could. Indeed, I hadn’t been aboard of her twenty-four hours before I found that I knew more about a ship than most of the men who commanded me. But as often as I thought of staying in the service, something told me I had better get out; and that was the reason why I refused to re-enlist or accept a commission.”

The fact was that, so long as the speedy Lane was capturing a valuable blockade runner or two every week, and money was coming into his pockets faster than he could have earned it in any other business, Jack Gray was quite willing to remain a quartermaster, and so he said nothing to Captain Wainwright concerning the honorable discharge that rightfully belonged to him; but now the case was different, and Jack wanted to go home and see how his mother and Marcy were getting on. He had been ordered aboard a vessel that couldn’t catch a mud-turtle in a stern chase, and consequently there was no more excitement or prize money for him. The paymaster who ought to have paid him off and given him his discharge had been captured with all his money and books, and Jack knew that his accounts would have to be settled in Washington; and there was so much red tape in Washington that there was no telling whether or not they would ever be settled. After thinking the matter over, Jack wrote a letter to Commodore Bell, telling him how the matter stood and asking for his discharge, and gave it into the hands of the captain of the Hatteras to be forwarded. The first result was about what he thought it would be. He had to pull off his petty officer’s badge and go before the mast. He was also assigned to an oar in the first cutter, and that was one of the best things that ever happened to Jack Gray.

Nowhere else in the world is life such a burden as aboard a vessel lying on a station with nothing but routine work to do. Jack found it so and chafed and fretted under it, but not for long. One day, about an hour after the dinner pennant had been hauled down, the lounging, lazy crew of the Hatteras were startled by the cry of “Sail ho!” from the lookout. Signal was at once made to the Brooklyn, Commodore Bell’s flagship, and the answer that came back was an order for the Hatteras to run out and see who and what the visitor was. Of course the crew were glad to be afloat once more, and some of them began talking about prize money; but others declared that if the stranger had any speed at all and desired to keep out of the way, the Hatteras would never get nearer to her than she was at that moment. But the sequel proved that the stranger did not want to keep out of the way, although at first she acted like it. She rounded to and turned her head out to sea as if she were fleeing from pursuit; but all the while the war ship came nearer and nearer to her, until the officer at the masthead made out that the chase was a large steamer under sail. This fact was duly communicated to the flagship by signal, and then the old Hatteras seemed to wake up and try to show a little speed; but Captain Blake became suspicious and ordered his ship cleared for action, with everything in readiness for a determined attack or a vigorous defense.

The pursuit continued for twenty miles, and finally night set in with no moon but plenty of starlight. Jack Gray, who had stood at one of the broadside guns until he was tired, had just given utterance to the hope that the chase would improve the opportunity to run out of sight or else come about and give them battle, just as she pleased, when an officer at the masthead sent down the startling information that the stranger had rounded-to and was coming back. Beyond a doubt that meant that something was going to happen. She hove in sight almost immediately, and in less time than it takes to tell it stopped her engines within a hundred yards, the captain of the blockader ringing his stopping bell at the same instant.

“What ship is that?” shouted the Union commander, from his place on the bridge.

“Her Britannic Majesty’s steamer Vixen!” was the reply. “What ship is that?”

“This is the United States ship Hatteras,” answered Captain Blake. “I will send a boat aboard of you.”

“When we heard this conversation,” said Jack, “we made up our minds that we had been chasing an English ship. Mind you, I don’t say a friendly ship, for England never was and never will be friendly to the United States. She would be glad to see us broken up to-morrow, and is doing all she dares to help the rebels along. Of course it was our captain’s duty to find out whether or not the other captain had told him the truth, and the only way he could do it was by sending an officer off to examine his papers. He had the first cutter called away, and, as that was the boat to which I belonged, I lost no time in taking offtaking off my side-arms and tumbling into her. And that was all that saved me from falling into Semmes’ power a second time.”

Jack then went on to say that, as soon as the officer had taken his place in the stern-sheets, the cutter was shoved off from the Hatteras and pulled around her stern; but just as she began swinging around with her bow toward the supposed English ship a most exciting and unexpected thing happened. A voice came from the latter’s deck, so clear and strong that the cutter’s crew could hear every word:

“This is the Confederate steamer Alabama!” And before the astonished blue-jackets had time to realize that they had been trapped the roar of a broadside rent the air, and shells and solid shot went crashing into the wooden walls of the doomed Hatteras. Semmes afterward took great credit to himself because he did not strike the Federal ship in disguise, but gave her “fair warning.” How long was it after he gave warning that he fired his broadside into her? Not two seconds. He took all the advantage he could, and yet there was no one who protested louder or had more to say about trickery and cowardice when the Federal officers took advantage of him. He made a great fuss because Captain Winslow protected the machinery and boilers of the Kearsarge with chains, as Admiral Farragut protected his vessels when he ran past the forts at New Orleans.

The roar of the Confederate steamer’s guns had scarcely ceased before an answering broadside came from the Union war ship. Without the loss of a moment both vessels were put under steam and the action became a running fight, the blue-jackets standing bravely to their guns and giving their powerful antagonist as good as she sent. The cutter’s crew tried in vain to return to their vessel. They rowed hard, but every turn of her huge paddle-wheels left them farther behind, and finally they gave up in despair and laid on their oars and watched the conflict. It was desperate but short. In just thirteen minutes from the time it began the Hatteras hoisted a white light at her masthead and fired an off-gun to show that she had been beaten.

“Fortune of war,” sighed the officer who was sitting in the cutter’s stern-sheets beside the coxswain. “But I tell you, men, I hate to see our old ship surrendered to that pirate. Back, port; give way, starboard! We haven’t surrendered, and we want to get away from here before they catch sight of us.”

No cutter’s crew ever pulled harder than Jack Gray and his shipmates pulled in obedience to this order. Jack forgot that he had a crippled arm, and when the cutter came about and pointed her head toward the shore more than twenty miles away, he rowed as strong an oar as he ever did in his life. He listened anxiously for the hail that would tell him the cutter had been discovered, but heard none; but he saw and reported something that sent an exultant thrill through the heart of every one of his companions.

“Mr. Porter,” said he, in tones which intense excitement rendered husky. “Our old tub has been surrendered, but she’ll never do the rebels any good. She’s sinking, sir.”

“Thank Heaven!” murmured the officer, whirling around as if he had been shot.

He couldn’t see anything through the darkness except the white light that the blockader had hoisted at her masthead in token of surrender, and which was swaying about in a way that would have been unaccountable to a landsman; but the blue-jackets knew she was going to the bottom. She went rapidly, too, for Captain Blake afterward reported that in two minutes from the time he left her the Hatteras disappeared, bow first. Then Jack thought that Mr. Porter would order the cutter back to assist in picking up the crew, but he didn’t do it. They would have reached the sinking vessel too late to be of any service, and besides Mr. Porter thought it his duty to report to the Flag-officer at once, believing that if the Brooklyn were promptly warned she could capture or sink the Alabama before she had time to get very far away. But the fleet had already been warned by the sound of the guns that the Hatteras had encountered an armed enemy of some description, and several steamers were hastening to the rescue; scattering widely in the pursuit, to cover as much space as possible and increase their chances of falling in with the enemy. The cutter passed these vessels at so great a distance that she could not attract the attention of any of them, and it was not until they had pulled all the way to Galveston, and boarded one of the blockading fleet which remained behind, that the particulars of the fight became known. None of the pursuing steamers ever saw the Alabama, which sailed away for the coast of Yucatan; but as one of them was returning to her anchorage the next morning, baffled and beaten in the chase, she fell in with the sunken Hatteras, whose royal masts were just above water. The night pennant floating from one of them told the melancholy story; but if Jack Gray and his shipmates had not escaped just as they did, it might have been a long time before Commodore Bell would have known that the dreaded Alabama had been in his immediate vicinity. But her day was coming. The first time she met a Union war ship that was anywhere near her match she was sent to the bottom.

Once more Jack was without a vessel, and had no clothes “to bless himself with” except those he stood in; but that didn’t trouble him half as much as did the discharge he was anxious to get. He and the rest of the cutter’s men were sent aboard the flagship when she returned to her anchorage, and that suited him, for it gave him a fair chance to gain the commodore’s ear—a task he set himself to accomplish as soon as the excitement had somewhat died away. But the Flag-officer was a regular, and like all regulars he moved in ruts of opinion so deep that a yoke of oxen could not have pulled him out. He couldn’t give Jack a discharge, he said, because he didn’t know when or where he enlisted, for how long, or anything about it. He couldn’t give him any money, either, for his name was not borne on the paymaster’s books. He could give him a paper stating that he had done service in the Union navy and let him go home, and that was all he could do for him.

“And that’s the kind of a discharge I got,” said Jack with a laugh. “But it proved to be good enough and strong enough to take me through the provost guards in New Orleans and get me a pass to come up here. I have not drawn a cent from Uncle Sam, so he owes me a year’s wages and better, as well as a lot of prize money. The commodore dispatched a vessel to New Orleans with his report of the loss of the Hatteras, and I was permitted to take passage on her.”

“How did you feel when you found yourself in a strange city with no money in your pocket and no friends to go to?” inquired Ned Griffin.

“I didn’t think much about it, because I never let a little thing like that worry me,” said Jack with another laugh. “I did not by any means intend to go hungry, or sleep on the Levee, if my pockets were empty. There were several of our vessels in the river, and I knew I could ship whenever I felt like it; but I had made up my mind that I would not go afloat again until I had said ‘hello!’ to my relatives up here in Mooreville.”

The first boat that left the dispatch steamer took Jack ashore and landed him on the Levee among some river craft that belonged to the quartermaster’s department of Banks’ army. Being a deep-water man he did not bestow more than a passing glance upon them, but turned his face toward the docks above at which a large fleet of sea-going vessels was moored; and as he walked he kept a bright lookout for two things—a sailorman who could tell him what had happened in the world since he left it (being on the blockade Jack thought was almost as bad as being out of the world), and a soldier who could direct him to the office of the provost marshal. As he stepped from the Levee to the nearest dock his gaze became riveted upon a rakish looking fore-and-aft schooner that lay there discharging a miscellaneous cargo. She looked familiar to him. She was painted white with a green stripe at her water-line, and bore the name “Hyperion, Portland,” on her stern; but Jack Gray was positive that he had known and sailed on her when she was painted black with a red stripe at the water-line, and went by a very different name. He dodged up the after gang-plank to the deck and took another look. He had had charge of that deck more than once. Everything on and about it was familiar to him, not excepting the face of the lank Yankee skipper, whose head and shoulders at that moment emerged from the companion-way. Jack turned about and approached him with a comical smile on his countenance.

“Want a pilot this trip, Captain Frazier?” said he.

“No, I don’t,” was the surly reply. He looked searchingly into Jack’s face, but could not remember that he had ever seen him before.

“No offence, I hope,” continued the latter. “But I served you so well before that I think you might give me a lift when you see me stranded here without a shot in the locker. I took the West Wind through Oregon Inlet when——”

“Mr. Gray—Jack!” said the captain, in an excited whisper. “Sh! Not another word out of you; not a whimper. Come below with me.”

Shaking all over with suppressed merriment Jack Gray followed the skipper down the stairs and into the cabin, the door of which was quickly but softly closed and locked.

“Sit down,” continued the captain. “And if you care a cent for me don’t speak above your breath. Where have you been? That uniform says you belong to the navy.”

“I did, but I don’t belong now,” replied Jack. “Shortly after I made that trip with you I shipped for a year, but have been kept over my time. I have been on the blockade, and have helped capture many a fine craft like this one.”

“Sh! Don’t speak so loud,” whispered Captain Frazier, for it was he. “But you couldn’t do harm to this craft now, for she is engaged in honest business.”

“No private ventures stowed away among her cargo?” said Jack.

“Nary venture. There’s no need of it, for I make money hand over fist in an honest way. I am a cotton trader. Got a permit and everything all square. And cotton will be worth a dollar a pound by the time I get back to New York.”

“What do you pay for it here?”

“That depends on the man I am dealing with. If he is a Union man I give him from seven to ten cents in greenbacks, which will buy eighty per cent. more stuff than Confederate scrip. If he is a good rebel, or if he is surrounded by rebel neighbors who are keeping an eye on his movements, I give him ten cents in rebel money.”

“Where do you get rebel money?” asked Jack.

“Anywhere—everywhere. I can get all I want for thirty cents on a dollar, and have bought some as low as twenty. It will be lower than that in less than a month. But, mind you, no one around here knows that I have been a blockade runner. And I am not at the head of this business. My Boston owners are doing it all and I am simply their agent. But are you really aground?”

“I never told a straighter story in my life,” answered Jack, who went on to describe how he happened to be in that condition. When his hasty narrative was finished Captain Frazier said:

“There’s always room aboard my schooner for such a sailorman as I know you to be, and if you want to sign with me as my chief officer I shall be glad to have you. And you must let me advance you money enough to provide for your immediate wants.”

When Jack reached this part of his story Rodney knew where that blue suit came from.