And now day after day passed by, unrelieved
save by the little common incidents of a peaceful voyage.
One day it would be a flying-fish that had leaped on board, and paid the
penalty of its indiscretion by doing duty next morning on the captain's
breakfast-table; another day a small sword-fish performed a similar
exploit; while on a third a heavy rain provided the great unwashed of
the forecastle with the unaccustomed luxury of copious ablutions in
fresh water. But not a sail was to be seen. Once only a simultaneous cry
from half-a-dozen sailors of "Light on the starboard bow!" produced a
temporary excitement, and caused the engineers to "fire up" at their
utmost speed. But the alarm proved false. The red light that had been so
confidently reckoned on as the port lantern of some steamer moving
across the Sumter's bows, was at length set down as a mere meteor, or it
might be some star setting crimson through the dim haze of the distant
horizon. Luck seemed quite to have deserted the Confederate flag. They
were lying in the very track of vessels between San Roque and New York.
Allowing a space of seventy-five miles on either side of the Sumter's
station as the extent of this track, and calculating upon a radius of
observation from her masthead of fifteen miles, one-fifth of the whole
number passing should certainly have come within her ken. Yet in the
course of seventeen weary days one vessel only had been seen, and the
Sumter's stock of patience was beginning to run very low.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70