Chapter IV: The Crisis (7)

The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington, and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.

I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his father, Essex Porter,--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that, than any of them did; and he worked with a right good-will in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of course, flung all that away.

All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty. But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way, more officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me once, with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a life as he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how busy he was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the time, more than to do anything else all the time; but that he read just five hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, writing in them at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include in these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had six or eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural Science, one which he called "Odds and Ends." But they were not merely books of extracts from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons, shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have Nolan's scrap-books.

Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then," said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them,--why Linnæus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the world; and he knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or died, or if the captain wanted him to, on any other occasion, he was always ready to read prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.

My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the War, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning House, which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain,--a chaplain with a blue coat. I never asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a "Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there were a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I first came to understand anything about "the man without a country" one day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on board. An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him who could speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail when the message came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain asked Who spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers did; and just as the captain was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out and said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain wished, as he understood the language. The captain thanked him, fitted out another boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.

When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience' sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him in every dialect, and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to the Parisian of Beledeljereed.

As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had mounted in desperation, and said:--

"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they understood that as well as they understood the English."

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.

"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."

Nolan "put that into Spanish,"--that is, he explained it in such Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.

"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to Cape Palmas."

This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non Palmas_," and began to propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead, as he hushed the men down, and said:--

"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother who will die if they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick, and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one says," choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."

Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he said:--

"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White Desert, they shall go home!"

And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.

But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me: "Youngster, let that show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your country, pray God in his mercy to take you that instant home to his own heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship, "never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those devils there had got hold of her to-day!"

I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in a whisper, say: "O, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your age!"

I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends. He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night, to walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so directly to his story again; but from one and another officer I have learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when I thought I had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth to have him discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison. They pretended there was no such man, and never was such a man. They will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to know nothing!

There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I believe to be a lie; or, rather, it is a myth, _ben trovato_, involving a tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,--asking him how he liked to be "without a country." But it is clear from Burr's life, that nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least mystery at bottom.

So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more dreadful; it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities. The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's. I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have done all that in them lay that they might have no country,--that all the honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country" might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish, like him.

For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man, submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold. Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault. Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,--from the map of the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table, when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington corvette, on the South American station. We were lying in the La Plata, and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined again, were entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild horses in Texas with his brother Stephen, at a time when he must have been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal of spirit,--so much so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked perfectly unconsciously:--

"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near twenty years."

There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California,--this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so far, and, I believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and Williams, the two Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in the chain of the captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a convulsion of sneezing. Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he did not know what. And I, as master of the feast, had to say,--

"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back's curious account of Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome?"

After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as best he could his self-appointed punishment,--rather less social, perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious, apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.

Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from Danforth, who is on board the Levant, a letter which gives an account of Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this story.

To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader should remember that after 1817, the position of every officer who had Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The government had failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do? Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What, then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have reason to think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means, "If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence of the very revelation I am making.

Here is the letter:--

"LEVANT, 2° 2' S. @ 131° W.

"DEAR FRED:--I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is
all over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage
more than I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in
which you used to speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he
was not strong, but I had no idea the end was so near. The doctor
has been watching him very carefully, and yesterday morning came to
me and told me that Nolan was not so well, and had not left his
state-room,--a thing I never remember before. He had let the doctor
come and see him as he lay there,--the first time the doctor had
been in the state-room,--and he said he should like to see me. O
dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to invent about
his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and there, to
be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as he
gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a glance
round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the box
he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and
around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic
eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just
clasping the whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear
old boy saw my glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see,
I have a country!' And then he pointed to the foot of his bed,
where I had not seen before a great map of the United States, as he
had drawn it from memory, and which he had there to look upon as he
lay. Quaint, queer old names were on it, in large letters: 'Indiana
Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,' and 'Louisiana Territory,' as
I suppose our fathers learned such things: but the old fellow had
patched in Texas, too; he had carried his western boundary all the
way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had defined nothing.

"'O Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home.
Surely you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not speak
till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship,
that there is not in America,--God bless her!--a more loyal man
than I. There cannot be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or
prays for it as I do, or hopes for it as I do. There are
thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for that, though
I do not know what their names are. There has never been one taken
away: I thank God for that. I know by that that there has never
been any successful Burr. O Danforth, Danforth,' he sighed out,
'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal fame or
of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after such
a life as mine! But tell me,--tell me something,--tell me
everything, Danforth, before I die!'

"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not
told him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no
delicacy, who was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all
this time over this dear, sainted old man, who had years ago
expiated, in his whole manhood's life, the madness of a boy's
treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I will tell you everything you ask
about. Only, where shall I begin?'

"O the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he
pressed my hand and said, 'God bless you!' 'Tell me their names,'
he said, and he pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know
is Ohio. My father lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan
and Indiana and Mississippi,--that was where Fort Adams is,--they
make twenty. But where are your other fourteen? You have not cut up
any of the old ones, I hope?'

"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names in as good
order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and
draw them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with
delight about Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had
marked a gold cross where he supposed his brother's grave was; and
he had guessed at Texas. Then he was delighted as he saw California
and Oregon;--that, he said, he had suspected partly, because he had
never been permitted to land on that shore, though the ships were
there so much. 'And the men,' said he, laughing, 'brought off a
good deal besides furs.' Then he went back--heavens, how far!--to
ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done to Barron for
surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever tried
again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.
But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I
am sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me
the true story of his serving the gun the day we took the
Java,--asked about dear old David Porter, as he called him. Then he
settled down more quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in an
hour the history of fifty years.

"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as
well as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about
Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and
Jackson; told him all I could think of about the Mississippi, and
New Orleans, and Texas, and his own old Kentucky. And do you think,
he asked who was in command of the 'Legion of the West.' I told him
it was a very gallant officer named Grant, and that, by our last
news, he was about to establish his head-quarters at Vicksburg.
Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that out on the map; it was
about a hundred miles, more or less, above his old Fort Adams; and
I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be at old Vick's
plantation,' said he: 'well, that is a change!'

"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of
half a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now
know what I told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of
steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs,--of inventions, and
books, and literature,--of the colleges, and West Point, and the
Naval School,--but with the queerest interruptions that ever you
heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated
questions of fifty-six years!

"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and
when I told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's
son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy
himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a
Kentuckian like himself, but I could not tell him of what family;
he had worked up from the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am
glad of that. As I have brooded and wondered, I have thought our
danger was in keeping up those regular successions in the first
families.' Then I got talking about my visit to Washington. I told
him of meeting the Oregon Congressman, Harding; I told him about
the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition; I told him about the
Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and Crawford's Liberty,
and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him everything I could
think of that would show the grandeur of his country and its
prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word
about this infernal Rebellion!

"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew
more and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I
gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me
not to go away. Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of
Public Prayer,' which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it
would open at the right place,--and so it did. There was his double
red mark down the page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated
with me, 'For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank
Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy
laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'--and so
to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the
same book, and I read the words more familiar to me: 'Most heartily
we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the
President of the United States, and all others in authority,'--and
the rest of the Episcopal collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have
repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five
years.' And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over
him and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I
am gone.' And I went away.

"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and
would sleep. I knew he was happy and I wanted him to be alone.

"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had
breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close
to his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of the
Cincinnati.

"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the place
where he had marked the text:--

"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not
ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a
city.'

"On this slip of paper he had written:--

"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will
not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at
Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say
on it:--

"'_In Memory of_

"'PHILIP NOLAN,

"'_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States._

"'He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no
man deserved less at her hands.'"

THE LAST OF THE FLORIDA.

FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.

[The Florida, Anglo-Rebel pirate, after inflicting horrible
injuries on the commerce of America and the good name of England,
was cut out by Captain Collins, from the bay of Bahia, by one of
those fortunate mistakes in international law which endear brave
men to the nations in whose interest they are committed. When she
arrived here the government was obliged to disavow the act. The
question then was, as we had her by mistake, what we should do with
her. At that moment the National Sailors' Fair was in full blast at
Boston, and I offered my suggestion in answer in the following
article, which was published November 19, 1864, in the "Boatswain's
Whistle," a little paper issued at the fair.

The government did not take the suggestion. Very unfortunately,
before the Florida was got ready for sea, she was accidentally sunk
in a collision with a tug off Fort Monroe, and the heirs of the
Confederate government or the English bond-holders must look there
for her, if the Brazilian government will give them permission.

For the benefit of the New York Observer I will state that a
despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200
times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before
it started. It is only a joke which suggests it.]

SPECIAL DESPATCH.

LETTER FROM CAPTAIN INGHAM, IN COMMAND OF THE FLORIDA.

[Received four years in advance of the mail by a lightning express,
which has gained that time by running round the world 1,200 times
in a spiral direction westward on its way from Brazil to our
publication-office. Mrs. Ingham's address not being known, the
letter is printed for her information.]

No. 29.

BAHAI, BRAZIL, April 1, 1868.

MY DEAR WIFE:--We are here at last, thank fortune; and I shall surrender the old pirate to-day to the officers of government. We have been saluted, are to be fêted, and perhaps I shall be made a Knight Commander of the Golden Goose. I never was so glad as when I saw the lights on the San Esperitu head-land, which makes the south point of this Bahia or bay.

You will not have received my No. 28 from Loando, and may have missed 26 and 24, which I gave to _outward_ bound whalemen. I always doubted whether you got 1, 7, 9, and 11. And for me I have no word of you since you waved your handkerchief from the window in Springfield Street on the morning of the 1st of June, 1865, nearly four years. My dear child, you will not know me.

Let me then repeat, very briefly, the outline of this strange cruise; and when the letters come, you can fill in the blanks.

The government had determined that the Florida must be returned to the neutral harbor whence she came. They had put her in complete repair, and six months of diplomacy had made the proper apologies to the Brazilian government. Meanwhile Collins, who had captured her by mistake, had, by another mistake, been made an admiral, and was commanding a squadron; and to insure her safe and respectful delivery, I, who had been waiting service, was unshelved, and, as you know, bidden to take command.

She was in apple-pie order. The engines had been cleaned up; and I thought we could make a quick thing of it. I was a little dashed when I found the crew was small; but I have been glad enough since that we had no more mouths. No one but myself knew our destination. The men thought we were to take despatches to the Gulf squadron.

You remember I had had only verbal orders to take command, and after we got outside the bay I opened my sealed despatches. The gist of them was in these words:--

"You will understand that the honor of this government is pledged for the _safe_ delivery of the Florida to the government of Brazil. You will therefore hazard nothing to gain speed. The quantity of your coal has been adjusted with the view to give your vessel her best trim, and the supply is not large. You will husband it with care,--taking every precaution to arrive in Bahia _safely_ with your charge, in such time as _your best discretion_ may suggest to you."

"_Your best discretion_" was underscored.

I called Prendergast, and showed him the letter. Then we called the engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the bunkers, but went and returned with his face white, through the black grime, to report "not four days' consumption." By some cursed accident, he said, the bunkers had been filled with barrels of salt-pork and flour!

On this, I ordered a light and went below. There had been some fatal misunderstanding somewhere. The vessel was fitted out as for an arctic voyage. Everywhere hard-bread, flour, pork, beef, vinegar, sour-krout; but, clearly enough, not, at the very best, five days of coal!

And I was to get to Brazil with this old pirate transformed into a provision ship, "at my best discretion."

"Prendergast," said I, "we will take it easy. Were you ever in Bahia?"

"Took flour there in '55, and lay waiting for India-rubber from July to October. Lost six men by yellow-jack."

Prendergast was from the merchant marine. I had known him since we were children. "Ethan," said I, "in my best discretion it would be bad to arrive there before the end of October. Where would you go?"

I cannot say he took the responsibility. He would not take it. You know, my dear, of course, that it was I who suggested Upernavik. From the days of the old marbled paper Northern Regions,--through the quarto Ross and Parry and Back and the nephew Ross and Kane and McClure and McClintock, you know, my dear, what my one passion has been,--to see those floes and icebergs for myself. Surely you forgive me, or at least excuse me. Do not you? Here was this fast steamer under me. I ought not to be in Bahia before October 25. It was June 1. Of course we went to Upernavik.

I will not say I regret it now. Yet I will say that on that decision, cautiously made, though it was "on my discretion," all our subsequent misfortunes hang. The Danes were kind to us,--the Governor especially, though I had to carry the poor fellow bad news about the Duchies and the Danish war, which was all fresh then. He got up a dance for us, I remember, and there I wrote No. 1 to you. I could not of course help--when we left him--running her up a few degrees to the north, just to see whether there is or is not that passage between Igloolik and Prince Rupert's Headland (and by the way there _is_). After we passed Igloolik, there was such splendid weather, that I just used up a little coal to drive her along the coast of King William's Land; and there, as we waited for a little duck-shooting on the edge of a floe one day, as our luck ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them with hard-tack crumbs and whale-oil. They fell to dancing, and we to laughing,--they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest woman tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash right on the little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened binnacle and compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and such a mess together as I remember now. We had to apologize; the doctor set her head as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread from the cabin, to console them, and got them off without a fight. But the next morning when I cast off from the floe, it proved the beggars had stolen the compass card, needle and all.

My dear Mary, there was not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship. The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle was not quite poetry.

As you shall see, if I ever get through. (Since I began, I have seen the Consul,--and heard the glorious news from home,--and am to be presented to the port authorities to-morrow.) It was the most open summer, Mary, ever known there. If I had not had to be here in October, I would have driven right through Lancaster Sound, by Baring's Island, and come out into the Pacific. But here was the honor of the country, and we merely stole back through the Straits. It was well enough there,--all daylight, you know. But after we passed Cape Farewell, we worked her into such fogs, child, as you never saw out of Hyde Park. Did not I long for that compass-card! We sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed. For thirty-seven days I did not get an observation, nor speak a ship! October! It was October before we were warm. At noon we used to sail where we thought it was lightest. At night I used to keep two men up for a lookout, lash the wheel, and let her drift like a Dutchman. One way as good as another. Mary, when I saw the sun at last, enough to get any kind of observation, we were wellnigh three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of fogs to me!

Well, I set her south again, but how long can you know if you are sailing south, in those places where the northeast winds and Scotch mists come from! Thank Heaven, we got south, or we should have frozen to death. We got into November, and we got into December. We were as far south as 37° 29'; and were in 31° 17' west on New Year's Day, 1866, when the second officer wished me a happy new year, congratulated me on the fine weather, said we should get a good observation, and asked me for the new nautical almanac! You know they are only calculated for five years. We had two Greenwich ones on board, and they ran out December 31, 1865. But the government had been as stingy in almanacs as in coal and compasses. They did not mean to keep the Confederacy in almanacs.

That was the beginning of our troubles. I had to take the old almanac, with Prendergast, and we figured like Cocker, and always kept ahead with a month's tables. But somehow,--I feel sure we were right,--but something was wrong; and after a few weeks the lunars used to come out in the most beastly way, and we always proved to be on the top of the Andes or in the Marquesas Islands, or anywhere but in the Atlantic Ocean. Well then, by good luck, we spoke the Winged Batavian; could not speak a word of Dutch, nor he a word of English; but he let Ethan copy his tables, and so we ran for St. Sacrament. I posted 8, 9, and 10 there; I gave the Dutchman 7, which I hope you got, but fear.

Well, this story is running long; but at St. Sacrament we started again, but, as ill-luck would have it, without a clean bill of health. At that time I could have run into Bahia with coal--of which I had bought some--in a week. But there was fever on shore,--and bad,--and I knew we must make pratique when we came into the outer harbor here; so, rather than do that, we stretched down the coast, and met that cyclone I wrote you about, and had to put into Loando. Understand, this was the first time we went into Loando. I have learned that wretched hole well enough since. And it was as we were running out of Loando, that, in reversing the engine too suddenly, lest we should smash up an old Portuguese woman's bum-boat, that the slides or supports of the piston-rod just shot out of the grooves they run in on the top, came cleverly down on the outside of the carriage, gave that odious _g-r-r-r_, which I can hear now, and then, _dump_,--down came the whole weight of the walking-beam, bent rod and carriages all into three figure 8's, and there we were! I had as lief run the boat with a clothes-wringer as with that engine, any day, from then to now.

Well, we tinkered, and the Portuguese dock-yard people tinkered. We took out this, and they took out that. It was growing sickly, and I got frightened, and finally I shipped the propeller and took it on board, and started under such canvas as we had left,--not much after the cyclone,--for the North and the South together had rather rotted the original duck.

Then,--as I wrote you in No. 11,--it was too late to get to Bahia before that summer's sickly season, and I stretched off to cooler regions again, "in my best discretion." That was the time when we had the fever so horribly on board; and but for Wilder the surgeon, and the Falkland Islands, we should be dead, every man of us, now. But we touched in Queen's Bay just in time. The Governor (who is his own only subject) was very cordial and jolly and kind. We all went ashore, and pitched tents, and ate ducks and penguins till the men grew strong. I scraped her, nearly down to the bends, for the grass floated by our side like a mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the once swift Florida would not make four knots an hour on the wind;--and this was the ship I was to get into Bahia in good order, at my best discretion!

Meanwhile none of these people had any news from America. The last paper at the Falkland Islands was a London Times of 1864, abusing the Yankees. As for the Portuguese, they were like the people Logan saw at Vicksburg. "They don't know anything good!" said he; "they don't know anything at all!" It was really more for news than for water I put into Sta. Lucia,--and a pretty mess I made of it there. We looked so like pirates (as at bottom the old tub is), that they took all of us who landed to the guard-house. None of us could speak Sta. Lucia, whatever that tongue may be, nor understand it. And it was not till Ethan fired a shell from the 100-pound Parrott over the town that they let us go. I hope the dogs sent you my letters. I suppose there was another infringement of neutrality. But if the Brazilian government sends this ship to Sta. Lucia, I shall not command her, that's all!

Well! what happened at Loando the second time, Valencia, and Puntos Pimos, and Nueva Salamanca, and Loando this last time, you know and will know, and why we loitered so. At last, thank fortune, here we are. Actually, Mary, this ship logged on the average only thirty-two knots a day for the last week before we got her into port.

Now think of the ingratitude of men! I have brought her in here, "according to my best discretion," and do you believe, these hidalgos, or dons, or señores, or whatever they are, had forgotten she existed. And when I showed them to her, they said in good Portugal that I was a liar. Fortunately the Consul is our old friend Kingsley. He was delighted to see me; thought I was at the bottom of the sea. From him we learned that the Confederacy was blown sky-high long ago. And from all I can learn, I may have the Florida back again for my own private yacht or peculium, unless she goes to Sta. Lucia.

Not I, my friends! Scrape her, and mend her, and give her to the marines,--and tell them her story; but do not intrust her again to my own Polly's own

FREDERIC INGHAM.

THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.

BY J. THOMAS DARRAGH (LATE C. C. S.).

[This paper was first published in the "Galaxy," in 1866.]

I see that an old chum of mine is publishing bits of confidential Confederate History in Harper's Magazine. It would seem to be time, then, for the pivots to be disclosed on which some of the wheelwork of the last six years has been moving. The science of history, as I understand it, depends on the timely disclosure of such pivots, which are apt to be kept out of view while things are moving.

I was in the Civil Service at Richmond. Why I was there, or what I did, is nobody's affair. And I do not in this paper propose to tell how it happened that I was in New York in October, 1864, on confidential business. Enough that I was there, and that it was honest business. That business done, as far as it could be with the resources intrusted to me, I prepared to return home. And thereby hangs this tale, and, as it proved, the fate of the Confederacy.

For, of course, I wanted to take presents home to my family. Very little question was there what these presents should be,--for I had no boys nor brothers. The women of the Confederacy had one want, which overtopped all others. They could make coffee out of beans; pins they had from Columbus; straw hats they braided quite well with their own fair hands; snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we had no hoop-skirts,--skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the Deer, the Flora, the J. C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J. C. Cobb sunk at sea, the Fore-and-Aft and the Greyhound were set fire to by their own crews, and the Varuna (our Varuna) was never heard of. Then the State of Arkansas offered sixteen townships of swamp land to the first manufacturer who would exhibit five gross of a home-manufactured article. But no one ever competed. The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch. The consequence was, that people's crinoline collapsed faster than the Confederacy did, of which that brute of a Grierson said there was never anything of it but the outside.

Of course, then, I put in the bottom of my new large trunk in New York, not a "duplex elliptic," for none were then made, but a "Belmonte," of thirty springs, for my wife. I bought, for her more common wear, a good "Belle-Fontaine." For Sarah and Susy each, I got two "Dumb-Belles." For Aunt Eunice and Aunt Clara, maiden sisters of my wife, who lived with us after Winchester fell the fourth time, I got the "Scotch Harebell," two of each. For my own mother I got one "Belle of the Prairies" and one "Invisible Combination Gossamer." I did not forget good old Mamma Chloe and Mamma Jane. For them I got substantial cages, without names. With these, tied in the shapes of figure eights in the bottom of my trunk, as I said, I put in an assorted cargo of dry-goods above, and, favored by a pass, and Major Mulford's courtesy on the flag-of-truce boat, I arrived safely at Richmond before the autumn closed.

I was received at home with rapture. But when, the next morning, I opened my stores, this became rapture doubly enraptured. Words cannot tell the silent delight with which old and young, black and white, surveyed these fairy-like structures, yet unbroken and unmended.

Perennial summer reigned that autumn day in that reunited family. It reigned the next day, and the next. It would have reigned till now if the Belmontes and the other things would last as long as the advertisements declare; and, what is more, the Confederacy would have reigned till now, President Davis and General Lee! but for that great misery, which all families understand, which culminated in our great misfortune.

I was up in the cedar closet one day, looking for an old parade cap of mine, which I thought, though it was my third best, might look better than my second best, which I had worn ever since my best was lost at the Seven Pines. I say I was standing on the lower shelf of the cedar closet, when, as I stepped along in the darkness, my right foot caught in a bit of wire, my left did not give way in time, and I fell, with a small wooden hat-box in my hand, full on the floor. The corner of the hat-box struck me just below the second frontal sinus, and I fainted away.