Morehead City is not a large place. In fact, it consisted in 1862 of a railroad depot at the end of a long wharf. It was intended to be the great seaport of North Carolina, but, at this time, trade had refused to move out of its accustomed channel, and the only thing that gave the least shadow of animation to the place was the arrival and departure of the daily train with its few passengers for Beaufort, which lies across the Bay, a few miles distant. The railroad, which has its terminus at Morehead City, runs up to Goldsboro’, where it connects with the main line of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. The Nashville was hauled alongside the wharf, and, as there was a faint expectation that the boats of the blockaders outside might come up at night and attempt to cut us out, preparations were made for a defence. The two Blakeley guns were placed on the wharf, and the muskets of which mention has been made before were brought up from the hold and prepared for use. The invaders, however, did not come, and there was nothing to disturb the solitude of the place but the occasional visit of gaunt North Carolina soldiers, attired for the most part in “butternut,” otherwise homespun. They were in the Confederate service, and on duty in the neighborhood. Most of them were armed with flint-lock muskets or shot guns, and some of them carried huge bowie-knives made out of scythe blades. They were generally tall, sinewy fellows, and evidently accustomed to exertion and privation, but they were not the sort of troops that I had expected to find the Confederate army composed of. A group of them honored the Nashville, when she came in, with the true Confederate yell, which I then heard for the first time, and without admiring it.

As soon as I could obtain permission, I went up to Morehead City proper, if the Railroad station at the water’s edge is not to pass by that name, and found there five or six wooden houses, a bar-room and the inevitable hotel. The clearing was small, and the pine woods came up to within a few yards of the hotel door. It was a barren country, and a joke among the sailors was that the hogs were so miserably poor that knots were tied in their tails by their prudent owners to keep them from slipping through the fences. Another story was that when a dog, in that part of North Carolina, found it necessary to bark, he leaned against a fence to keep from falling.

Captain Pegram went to Richmond to make his report, and took with him a number of mysterious boxes which had been brought aboard at Southampton. There was much speculation as to their contents, but I believe that they held nothing more dangerous than bank-note paper, postage stamps and lithographing apparatus. I remained aboard, of course, and there was little if any change in the routine of duty. There was paint to clean, and there were decks to sweep; the sails were to be unbent and sent below. I cannot say that my value as a sailor had increased materially during the voyage, and I had not even learned to tie, with any certainty, a fast knot. On the hurricane deck, as is usual on steamers, there was a score or two of wooden buckets for fire purposes. They were used occasionally for dipping up water. I tried my hand at it several times, while the vessel was in motion, and, when the bottom of the bucket was not driven out or the handle did not give way, I found, to my dismay, that I had made a slippery hitch, and saw the bucket slip smoothly into the water as soon as the strain came upon the line. Some of the men made handsome buckets of canvas, which they carefully embroidered, and I was not much more lucky with these than I was with the wooden ones. I have mentioned how beautifully clear the water was in the harbor at St. George’s, Bermuda, and the time with me never seemed to pass more slowly than when one of these fancy buckets had escaped from my line and was settling down in the water, and I had an agonizing expectation that Sawyer would reach the spot where I was standing before it had gone completely out of sight. I think that, at a moderate calculation, I must be responsible to the Confederacy for a dozen wooden buckets besides several canvas buckets.

It was now time that I should determine what to do. The small newspaper published at Newbern, N. C., reached us occasionally, and from this we received the first news of the glorious victory of the Virginia in the fight at Hampton Roads, when she sank the Cumberland and the Congress. There was great jubilation aboard that day. In the newspaper I found appeals for volunteers for different companies then raising for the war. I cannot give a better idea of my frame of mind than by saying that, at this time, I had determined to take my discharge from the Nashville, and decide, by tossing-up, which one of the various companies named in the newspaper I should join. I expected nothing better.

There was a surprise in store for me. One furiously cold morning, immediately after the return of Captain Pegram from Richmond, I was scraping the fore-yard, wet through with the falling sleet and intensely uncomfortable, when one of the boys from the ward-room came forward and called to me to say that I was wanted in the saloon. I went below at once, and into the saloon, where I found Captain Pegram, who spoke very kindly, and told me that, when I first came aboard, he had thought that I was not serious in my avowed purposes, and that, for this reason, he had done nothing to encourage me; but that he and his officers had watched me very closely, and were so well pleased with my conduct that he had laid my case before the Secretary of the Navy, who had authorized him to appoint me a Master’s Mate in the Confederate Navy. This announcement, so entirely unexpected, and which bridged for me, in a moment, the gulf which, aboard ship, separates the sailor from the officer, completely overwhelmed me. Captain Pegram saw my agitation, and told me that he should expect me to mess with him while we remained aboard, and that he would have my trunk placed in a state-room which he had ordered to be prepared for me. I went forward, thrust off my sailor’s garb as rapidly as I could, put on the solitary civilian’s suit which remained to me, and then was ready to receive the kind congratulations of the officers and the effusive demonstrations of regard of the truculent boatswain. Sawyer told me that he was delighted to hear of my promotion, which was just what he had expected, as he had always seen that I was not in the position that I ought to hold! Much to my regret I did not have the satisfaction of meeting Mr. Sawyer again after I left the Nashville, when I might have had the pleasure of telling him precisely what I thought of him and his ways. My only reply to his congratulations was to ask to be permitted to pay for the buckets I had disposed of in the ways I have described. He said it was of “no consequence.”