THE MAN HE WANTED TO SEE.
“What in the world did you bring those useless fellows back here for?”
was the way in which Rodney Gray welcomed Lambert when he marched the
two negroes up to the porch where he was sitting. “I was in hopes I had
seen the last of them.”
“Why, dog-gone it, they’re yourn, an’ I jest want to see if what they
have been tellin’ me is the truth,” said Lambert in a surprised tone. “I
found ’em pikin’ along the highway with them packs onto their backs an’
no passes into their pockets——”
“Don’t need no passes no mo’,” interrupted Bob in a surly voice. “I am
jes as free as you be, Mistah Lambert.”
“Jest listen at the nigger’s imperdence!” cried Lambert, astonished and
angry because Rodney did not at once take Bob to task for his freedom of
speech. “This is what comes of havin’ so many Yankees prowlin’ about the
country.”
“That’s about the size of it. Bob is as free as you or I, and here is
the paper that says so,” declared Rodney, taking a printed copy of the
proclamation from his pocket.
“Who writ that there paper, an’ where did you get it?”
“The city is flooded with copies of it, and the first scouting party
that rides through here will scatter it right and left among the
negroes. President Lincoln wrote it.”
“What right’s he got to do anything of the sort? The niggers don’t
belong to him.”
“Well, he’s done it, any way, and you and your friends will have to come
out of the swamp and go to work if you hope to get anything to eat. My
father says we can’t help ourselves, and that’s why I talked to Bob and
the rest the way I did a while ago.”
“But I aint agreein’ to no such arrangement,” replied Lambert, who could
scarcely have felt more aggrieved and insulted if he had been the
largest slaveholder in the State.
“Nobody asked my father if he would agree to it, either; but he’ll have
to take war as it comes, and so will you and all of us. The blacks are
lost to us and you will have to go to work; I don’t see any way out of
it. You might as well turn your prisoners loose and let them go among
the Yanks if they want to.”
The ignorant Lambert could not yet understand the situation, for it took
him a long time to get new things through his head, and this was the
first he had heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. He looked hard at
Rodney to see if he was in earnest, then swung his clubbed rifle in the
air and shouted “Git!” at the top of his voice; whereupon the frightened
darkies took to their heels and disappeared in an instant. But they did
not retreat in the direction of the road. They made the best of their
way to their cabins in the quarter and hid themselves there. When they
were out of sight Lambert put his rifle under his arm and pulled out his
cob pipe.
“I’m more of a secessioner now nor I ever was before,” said he. “We uns
have just got to whop in this war, kase if we don’t our niggers will be
gone, an’ where’ll I get a job of overseein’?”
“You’ll never be an overseer again,” answered Rodney. “You will have to
go into the field and hoe cotton and cane yourself.”
“Not by no means I won’t,” said Lambert fiercely. “That there is
nigger’s work, an’ I can’t seem to stoop to it. It don’t make no sort of
difference to rich folks like you how the war ends, kase you’ve got
cotton, an’ cotton is money these times. I aint got nary thing.”
Lambert watched Rodney out of the corners of his eyes while he was
applying a lighted match to the tobacco with which he had filled his
pipe, but the boy had nothing to say. He thought there was a threat
hidden under Lambert’s last words.
“There’s one thing about it,” the latter continued after a little pause,
“if we get whopped I won’t be the only poor man there is in Louisiany,
tell your folks.”
With this parting shot he turned his mule about and rode out of the
yard. And Rodney, angry as he was, let him go. He knew now just what he
had to expect from the ex-Home Guard and made the mental resolution
that, if his father would consent, he would be prepared to make a
prisoner of Lambert the next time he met him.
“Something of the sort must be done, and before long, too,” thought
Rodney when he went to bed that night, “or the first thing we know our
cotton will go the way Mr. Randolph’s did. If the cotton was mine I
would promise to hand Lambert a few hundred dollars as soon as it was
sold, but then he is so treacherous I couldn’t put any faith in his
promises. I wish he had kept away from here to-day. His visit worried me
more than Lincoln’s proclamation.”
Rodney intended to go home and lay the matter before his father as soon
as he had seen the hands fairly at work in the morning; but just as he
arose from his breakfast Mr. Gray rode into the yard, accompanied by a
stranger whose appearance and actions attracted Rodney’s attention at
once and amused him not a little. He sat on a bare-back mule (Mr. Gray’s
fine horses and saddles had disappeared with Breckenridge’s men), with
his shoulders humped up, his head drawn down between them, his arms
stiffened and his hands braced firmly against the mule’s withers, and
his broad back bent in the form of an arch. He wore a blue flannel suit,
a black slouch hat, a flowing neck-handkerchief tied low on his breast,
and finer shoes and stockings than Rodney himself had been in the habit
of wearing of late. He had a sharp blue eye, a bronzed face, a heavy
blond mustache, and gazed about him with the air of one who might know a
thing or two, even if he didn’t know how to ride a mule bare-back.
Rodney hastened down the steps to welcome his father, and then looked
inquiringly at the young man in blue, who placed his clenched hands on
his hips and stared hard at Rodney.
“De oberseer he gib us trouble,
An’ he dribe us round a spell;
We’ll lock him up in de smokehouse cellar,
Wid de key frown in de well.
De whip is los’, de hand-cuff broken,
An’ ole moster’ll have his pay;
He’s ole ’nough, big ’nough, an’ oughter knowed better
Dan to went an’ run away,”
sang the stranger in a melodious tenor voice. “Hallo, Johnny!”
“Hallo, yourself,” replied Rodney. He was so astonished at this strange
greeting that he did not know what else to say. He gazed earnestly at
the singer, but there was no smile of recognition under the blond
mustache, though the blue eyes twinkled merrily. Then he looked toward
his father for an explanation, but that gentleman, who had by this time
dismounted, stood with his folded arms resting on his mule’s back, and
had not a word of explanation to offer.
“You are a very nice-looking rebel, I must say,” were the visitor’s next
words.
“I am aware of it,” returned Rodney; “but they are the best I’ve got to
my back.”
“I was speaking of you and not of your clothes,” said the stranger
hastily. “My good mother away up in North Carolina long ago taught me——”
“Jack! O Jack!” shouted Rodney joyfully. With one jump he reached his
cousin’s side, and seizing his outstretched hand in both his own, fairly
dragged him to the ground.
“Easy, easy!” cautioned Mr. Gray. “That’s Jack, but he isn’t quite as
sound as he was the last time you met him.”
“I am overjoyed to see you after so long a separation,” said Rodney, in
some degree moderating the energy of his hand-shaking. “How did you
leave Marcy and his mother? and has Marcy always been true to his
colors, as he so often declared he would be, no matter what happened?
How came you here when nobody dreamed of seeing you, and where have you
been to get hurt?”
“I have been offsetting your work,” replied Jack, rolling alongside
Rodney, sailor fashion, as the latter slipped an arm through his own and
led him to the porch. “You worked fifteen months to make this unholy
rebellion successful, and I worked sixteen months and more to put it
down; so you might as well have stayed at home with your mother.”
“Then you have been at sea?” exclaimed Rodney.
“Correct. There’s where I belong, you know. And I heard in a roundabout
way that Marcy has had a brief experience, also. He was pilot on one of
our gunboats during the fights at Roanoke Island, but where he is now I
haven’t the least idea. It is a long time since I got a word from home,”
said the sailor sadly. “I am on my way there now, and figuring to make
some money by the trip. I am dead broke.”
“Haven’t you a discharge?”
“A sort of one, but nary cent of cash.”
“How does that come? Why didn’t your paymaster settle with you when he
handed over your discharge?”
“Well, the first one couldn’t very handily, because he was captured,
together with his money and accounts; and the second one couldn’t do it
either, for he was captured too, and his money and books went to the
bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, or into the hands of that pirate Semmes,
which amounts to the same thing.”
“Why, Jack, what do you mean? You must have been in a fight.”
“That was what I thought when I found myself stranded on the deck of a
strange ship without a bag or hammock to bless myself with, and no mess
number,” said Jack, with a laugh. “My first vessel, the _Harriet Lane_,
was captured at Galveston on New Year’s Day, and my second, the
_Hatteras_, was sunk on the night of the 11th by the _Alabama_. Yes, I
have been in two or three fights.”
“Of course we heard about the two you mention, but never once thought of
your being there,” said Rodney. “Were you shot?”
“Oh, no. I was struck on the shoulder by something, don’t know what,
when the gunboat _Westfield_ was blown up by her crew to keep her from
falling into the hands of the rebels. If I hadn’t been a good swimmer I
should now be rusticating at Tyler, Texas, or some other Southern
watering-place.”
“Well, now, take this big chair—you have grown to be a pretty good-sized
fellow since I last saw you—and settle back at your ease and tell us all
about it,” said Rodney. “What do you mean when you say you are figuring
on making some money this trip? And if you are dead broke, where did you
get that blue suit? They don’t issue that style of clothes to the
foremast hands in the navy, do they? Or are you an officer?”
“One at a time,” replied Jack. “One at a time, and your questions will
last a heap longer. I am a trader.”
“O Jack,” exclaimed Rodney, who was all excitement in a moment. “Then
you are just the man we are looking for. Have you a permit?”
“Well, I—you see—that is to say, no; I haven’t.”
“Then you are not the man we want to see at all,” said Rodney in a
disappointed tone. “You can’t trade without it.”
“I am painfully aware of the fact. And perhaps you wonder how I am going
to buy cotton when I am dead broke, don’t you? I have influential
friends; and thereby hangs a tale as long as a yardarm.”
“Suppose you leave off bothering your cousin now and go home with us,”
suggested Mr. Gray, when he saw that Rodney was settling himself to
listen to a lengthy story. “We haven’t seen you at the house very often
of late, and you are almost as much of a stranger to your mother as you
would be if you lived in Vicksburg. We haven’t heard all Jack’s war
history yet, and perhaps he will give it to us to-night after supper.”
Rodney was glad to agree to the proposition, and at his request Ned
Griffin was invited to make one of the party, for he was sure to be one
of the most interested listeners. In fact the Grays had come to look
upon Ned as one of the family. Jack’s story was not a long one, and you
ought to hear it, in order to know how he happened to “turn up” there in
Mooreville when, as Rodney said, no one dreamed of seeing him, and we
will tell it in our own way, leaving out a good deal of what Jack called
“sailor lingo.”
The last time we saw Jack Gray was so long ago that you have perhaps
forgotten that we ever mentioned his name. Instead of following in the
footsteps of his father and becoming a planter, Jack had sailed the blue
water from his earliest boyhood, and was the elder brother of our Union
hero, Marcy Gray, who was taken from his home at dead of night by a
party of blue-jackets to serve as pilot on Captain Benton’s gunboat
during the fight at Roanoke Island. Jack was Union all over, and, even
when it was dangerous for him to do so, could hardly refrain from
expressing his contempt for those who were trying to break up the
government. When we first brought him to your notice he had already had
some thrilling experience with the enemies of the flag under which he
had sailed all over the world, his vessel, the brig _Sabine_, having
been one of the first to fall into the power of the Confederate cruiser
_Sumter_.
If you have read “Marcy, the Blockade-Runner,” you will remember that
the _Sabine_ was under the command of men who did not intend to remain
prisoners a minute longer than they were obliged to; that the rebel
banner had no sooner been hoisted at the peak in the place of their own
flag, than they began laying plans to haul it down again, and that the
captured brig was in the hands of the prize crew not more than twelve
hours. Captain Semmes could not burn her as he would have been glad to
do, for it so happened that she had a neutral cargo on board. The sugar
and molasses with which her hold was filled were consigned to an English
port in the island of Jamaica, and if he had destroyed it by applying
the torch to the _Sabine_, the rebel commander would surely have brought
his government into trouble with England. That was something he could
not afford to do, so he determined to take his prize into the nearest
Cuban port, in the hope that the Spanish authorities would permit him to
land the cargo and sell the brig for the benefit of the Confederate
government. There is every reason to believe that he would have been
disappointed, for Spain was too friendly to the United States to give
aid and comfort to her enemies; but before the matter could be put to
the test the _Sabine’s_ men, with Jack Gray at their head, quietly
overpowered the rebel prize crew that had been put aboard of her and
filled away for Key West, which was the nearest Federal naval station.
When they arrived there they turned their five prisoners over to the
commandant and set sail for Boston, taking with them the valuable cargo
that ought to have gone to Jamaica. When off the coast of North Carolina
they had a short but rather exciting race with Captain Beardsley’s
privateer _Osprey_, on which Marcy Gray, Sailor Jack’s brother, was
serving as pilot; but the _Sabine_ was too swift to be overhauled, and
her skipper too wide-awake to be deceived by the sight of the friendly
flag which their pursuers gave to the breeze in the hope of alluring the
defenceless merchantman to her destruction.
How the brig’s owners accounted for the cargo of molasses and sugar they
so unexpectedly found on their hands Jack Gray neither knew nor cared,
for his first and only thought was to reach home and see how his mother
and Marcy were getting on. In this the master of the _Sabine_ stood his
friend by securing for him a berth as second officer on board the fleet
schooner _West Wind_, which, while claiming to be an honest coaster, was
really engaged in a contraband trade that would have made her a lawful
prize to the first Federal blockader that happened to overhaul and
search her. Jack knew all about it and understood the risk he was
taking; but he accepted the position when it was offered, because he
could not see that there was any other way for him to get home. Although
the schooner’s cargo was consigned to a well-known American firm in
Havana, the owners did not mean that it should go there at all. They
intended that it should be run through the blockade and sold at Newbern.
Captain Frazier explained all this to Jack, and though the latter did
not believe in giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Old Flag, he
not only accepted the position of second mate and pilot of the _West
Wind_, but also invested two-thirds of his hard-earned wages in quinine,
calomel, and other medicines of which the Confederacy stood much in
need, and sold them in Newbern so as to clear about twelve hundred
dollars. But it wasn’t money that Jack Gray cared for just then. He
wanted to see his mother and Marcy.
The enterprise was successful. Captain Frazier ran down the coast
without falling in with any of the blockaders, Sailor Jack took the
schooner through Oregon Inlet without the least trouble, the
Confederates were ready to pay gold for her cargo, and then Captain
Frazier loaded with cotton for Bermuda, while his pilot, with one of the
_West Wind’s_ foremast hands for company, set out for home on foot. We
have told how he came like a thief in the night and aroused his brother
by tossing pebbles against his bedroom window, and what he did during
the short time he remained under his mother’s roof. We have also
described some of the exciting incidents that happened when Marcy took
him out to the blockading fleet in the _Fairy Belle_—how they ran foul
of Captain Beardsley’s schooner as they were passing through Crooked
Inlet, and were afterward hailed by a steam launch, whose commanding
officer would have given everything he possessed if he could have
brought that same schooner within range of his howitzer for about two
minutes—but they found one of the cruisers, the _Harriet Lane_, without
much trouble and Sailor Jack remained aboard of her, while Marcy filled
away for home. And we may add that the latter never heard from his
brother again until he read in the papers that his vessel had been
captured at Galveston.
Bright and early the next morning, after a short interview with Captain
Wainwright, the commander of the _Harriet Lane_, Jack Gray was shipped
with due formality and rated as “seaman” on the books of the paymaster,
who ordered his steward to serve him two suits of clothes and the
necessary small stores. Ten minutes afterward, having rigged himself out
in blue and tossed his citizen’s suit through one of the ports into the
sea, Jack was working with the crew as handily as though he had been
attached to that particular vessel all his life. Of course he had never
been drilled with small-arms or in handling big guns; but being quick to
learn, his mates never had reason to call him a lubber, nor was he ever
sent to the mast for awkwardness or neglect of duty.
The _Harriet Lane_ had been built for the revenue service, and was
considered to be the finest vessel in it. She was small, not more than
five hundred tons burden, but she was swift; and if a suspicious craft
appeared in the offing, the _Lane_, oftener than any other steamer, was
sent out to see who she was and what business she had there.
Consequently the life Jack led aboard of her was as full of excitement
and active duty as he could have wished it to be. Much to Marcy’s regret
she took no part in the fight at Roanoke Island. Not being intended for
so heavy work, she remained outside to watch for blockade runners, and
so Marcy never had a chance to see how his brother looked in a blue
uniform.
Not long after that they were still farther separated. For weeks there
had been rumors that the government intended to make an effort to
recapture some of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico that had been seized
by the Confederates; but whether New Orleans, Galveston, or Mobile was
to be taken first, or whether the _Lane_ was to have a hand in it,
nobody knew. The last question was answered when all the vessels that
could be spared from the Atlantic blockading fleet, Jack’s among the
number, were ordered to report to Flag-officer Farragut at Ship Island
in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way they picked up a large fleet of mortar
schooners which had been ordered to rendezvous at Key West, and reached
their destination six weeks in advance of the army of General Butler,
which was to co-operate with them in the capture of New Orleans. But the
time was not passed in idleness. They ran down to the mouths of the
Mississippi, and worked a full month to get their vessels over the bar
into the river. They found but fifteen feet of water there, while many
of the fleet drew from three to seven feet more, so that, when they had
been lightened almost to the bare hull, the tugs had to pull them
through a foot or more of mud. It was tiresome and discouraging work,
but the same patience, determination, and skill that carried
Flag-officer Goldsborough safely through the gale at Hatteras enabled
Farragut to overcome the obstructions at the mouths of the Mississippi,
and on the 8th of April five powerful steam sloops, two large sailing
vessels, seventeen gunboats, and twenty-one mortar schooners were fairly
over the bar and ready for business. But three more weary weeks passed
before active operations were begun, during which Farragut and Butler
met at Ship Island and decided upon a plan of operations, and the river
up to the forts was carefully surveyed, so that the Union commanders, by
simply looking at the compasses in their binnacles, could tell how far
off and in what direction each fort and battery lay, and how they ought
to elevate and train their guns in order to reach them. Of course the
rebels were not idle while these surveys were being made, and protested
against them with every cannon they could bring to bear upon the boats
and men engaged in the work; but “in spite of all dangers and
difficulties the surveys were accomplished and maps prepared showing the
bearing and distance from every point on the river to the flagstaffs in
the forts.”
On the morning of the 17th the rebels began the fight in earnest by
sending down a fire-raft that had been saturated with tar and
turpentine; but a boat which put off from the _Iroquois_ towed the raft
ashore, where it burned itself out, doing no harm to anybody. Then the
mortar schooners took a hand and pounded Fort Jackson with their
thirteen-inch shells until they set it on fire and destroyed all the
clothing and commissary stores it contained. Then the barrier which
extended straight across the river from Fort Jackson, and was formed of
dismantled vessels securely anchored and bound together with heavy
chains, was cut, and Farragut was ready to perform the feat that made
him famous the world over and placed him where he rightfully belonged—at
the head of our navy. He ran by the forts with the loss of but a single
vessel, the _Varuna_, which was the swiftest and weakest in the
squadron. Having been built for a merchantman she was not intended for
such work as Farragut put upon her, but she won the honors of the fight
before she went down, having helped sink or disable six of the rebel
fleet, any one of which was fairly her match.
The _Lane_ took no part in this fight, but remained behind to guard
Porter’s mortar schooners, which dropped down the river as soon as
Farragut’s boats had passed the forts and closed with the Confederate
fleet which came gallantly down the river to meet them.
“But our position was one of great danger, and we knew it,” said Sailor
Jack at this point in his narrative. “There were at least fifteen
vessels in the rebel fleet, two of which, the _Louisiana_ and
_Manassas_, the former mounting sixteen heavy guns, were the main
reliance of the enemy, and supposed to be able to deal with us as the
_Merrimac_ dealt with the _Cumberland_ in Hampton Roads. But we never
saw the _Louisiana_ until the thing was over, although we afterward
learned that she had been assigned an important position in the fight.
The other iron-clad was on hand, and began operations by shoving a
fire-raft against the flagship, which ran aground in trying to escape
from her. But instead of coming on down the river and destroying our
mortar fleet, as she could have done very easily, for such wooden boats
as the _Lane_ could not have stood against her five minutes, she rounded
to and went back after Farragut, who ordered the _Mississippi_ to sink
her. She didn’t succeed in doing that, but she riddled the _Manassas_
with a couple of broadsides, set her on fire, and let her float down the
river with the current. I tell you I was frightened when I saw that
ugly-looking thing bearing down on us. We opened fire on her, and in a
few minutes she blew up and went down out of sight.”
Shortly after this, Jack went on to relate, one of the most important
and impressive incidents of the seven days’ fight took place on board
the _Harriet Lane_. When Porter received a note from Flag-officer
Farragut stating that he had passed the forts in safety, destroying the
Confederate flotilla on the way, and was on the point of starting for
New Orleans, and suggesting that possibly the forts might surrender if
summoned to do so, Porter sent a boat ashore to see what the rebels
thought about it; and the answer was that they didn’t acknowledge that
they had been whipped yet. Although the forts had been battered out of
shape by the shower of heavy shells that had been rained into them, the
garrisons could still find shelter in the bomb-proofs, and if it was all
the same to Porter they would hold out a while longer. But the men who
had to fight the guns did not look at it that way. They were ready to
give up, for they knew they would have to do it sooner or later; and
when Porter began another bombardment, which he did without loss of
time, the men began deserting by scores, and the next day the rebel
commander hauled down his flag.
“These battles were all won by the navy,” said Jack proudly, “and
everything on and along the river was destroyed by or surrendered to the
navy, for the soldiers didn’t come up till the trouble was all over. We
went up with our little fleet and anchored abreast of Fort Jackson. A
boat was sent ashore, and when it came back it brought General Duncan
and two or three other high-up rebel officers, who did not act at all
like badly beaten men, and they were received aboard the _Lane_ and
taken into the cabin, where the terms of capitulation were to be drawn
up and signed. They hadn’t been gone more than five minutes when some of
the crew happened to look up the river, and there was that big
iron-clad, the _Louisiana_, bearing down on us, a mass of flames. Then I
was frightened again, I tell you. Mounting, as she did, sixteen heavy
guns, she must have had all of twenty thousand pounds of powder in her
magazine, and what would become of us if she blew up in the midst of our
fleet? There wouldn’t be many of us left to tell the story. It was an
act of treachery on the part of the rebel naval officers which Farragut
was prompt to punish by sending them North as close prisoners, while the
army officers were given their freedom under parole.”
“Did she do any damage when she blew up?” asked Rodney, who was deeply
interested in the story.
“Not any to speak of,” replied Jack, “because the explosion took place
before she got among us. Of course word was sent below as soon as we
caught sight of her, and the order was promptly signalled to every
vessel in sight to play out her cable to the bitter end, and stand by to
sheer as wide as possible from the blazing iron-clad as she drifted
down; but we had hardly set to work to obey the order when there was a
wave in the air, which I felt as plainly as I ever felt a wave of water
pass over my head; the _Lane_ heeled over two streaks, everything loose
on deck was jostled about, and then there was a rumbling sound, not half
as loud as you would think it ought to be, and the danger was over. The
_Louisiana_ blew up before she got to us, and that was a lucky thing for
the _Harriet Lane_.”
And Jack might have added that it was a lucky thing for the whole
country, for the commander, Porter, who was in the _Lane’s_ cabin with
the rebel officers, was afterward the fighting Admiral Porter, who
commanded the Mississippi squadron. His death at that crisis would have
been a national loss.