A Victorious Union by Oliver Optic (most life changing books TXT) 📗

a tear from his eye. "He was the guest of Captain Rombold; but he has been turned out of his cabin to make room for the wounded."

"Dr. Linscott with his two mates has gone to the assistance of Dr. Davidson, whose hands are more than full, and perhaps he will see your uncle. Where is he now?" inquired the captain.

218 "Mr. Vapoor saw him on the deck, but he did not speak to him, for Uncle Homer avoided him. The ward room of the prize has at least two wounded officers in it, and I don't know how many more, so that my poor uncle has no place to lay his head if he is sick," said Christy, full of sympathy for his father's brother.

"That will never do!" exclaimed the commander bruskly. "He shall have a place to lay his head, sick or well. Captain Rombold occupies one of the staterooms in my cabin, and your uncle shall have the other."

"But where will you berth, captain?" demanded Christy.

"No matter where! I will go and find your uncle at once;" and Christy saw him next mounting the gangway steps.

The commander had no difficulty in finding the gentleman he sought; for he was wandering about the deck of the prize, and no one seemed to take any notice of him. He had been the honored guest of Captain Rombold, though he had hardly shown himself on deck since the steamer left Mobile, and few of the ship's company seemed to know who he was.

219 "Good-morning, Colonel Passford," said Captain Breaker, as he confronted him in the midst of the ruins of the spare wheel, the wrecks of the mizzen mast, and the bulwarks on the quarterdeck.

"Good-morning, Captain Breaker," replied the planter, taking the offered hand of the commander, with a feeble effort to smile. "Of course I knew that you were near, for you have given abundant proofs of your presence on board of this vessel."

"But we meet now as friends, and not as enemies. I know that you have done your duty to your country as you understand it, and I have done the same," continued the commander, still holding the hand of the colonel.

"You have been very kind to Captain Rombold, Gill informs me, and"—

"He set the example for me, and I have striven to follow it," interposed the captain. "But his generosity was first exercised in behalf of your nephew, Christy."

"The steward informed me that Christy had been wounded; and Captain Rombold assured me that the Tallahatchie was captured in consequence of a very daring act on the part of my nephew," added the planter.

220 "I should not state it quite so strongly as that, though his action certainly enabled us to capture the ship sooner, and with less loss on our part than would otherwise have been the case. As to the ultimate result of the battle, Captain Rombold and myself would disagree. But with your assent, Colonel Passford, I think we had better cease to discuss the action, which is now an event of the past. I am informed that you have been compelled to leave the captain's cabin."

"And I cannot find a resting place in the ward room or steerage," added the planter.

"I have come on board of the prize to invite you to share my cabin with Captain Rombold, for I have two staterooms," said Captain Breaker, suddenly changing the subject of conversation.

"You are very kind, my dear sir; but your arrangement would incommode yourself," suggested the colonel.

"My cabin is quite large, and I shall be able to make ample accommodations for myself," persisted the commander, as he took the arm of the planter. "Permit me to conduct you to your new quarters."

"As I am once more a prisoner"—

"Hardly," interposed the captain, as he led the 221 planter to the gangway, "I shall regard you as a non-combatant, at least for the present; and I desire only to make you comfortable. The flag-officer must decide upon your status."

Colonel Passford allowed himself to be conducted to the deck of the Bellevite; and he was no stranger on board of the ship, for when she was a yacht he had made several excursions in her in company with his family. The first person he observed was his nephew, seated in his arm-chair where he could overlook all that took place on the deck. He hastened to him, detaching his arm from the hand of the captain, and gave him an affectionate greeting.

"I was very sorry to learn that you were wounded, Christy," said he, holding the right hand of the young officer.

"Not badly wounded, Uncle Homer," replied Christy. "I hope you are well."

"I am not very well, though I do not call myself sick. Have you heard from your father lately, Christy?" asked his uncle.

"Not for a long time, for no store-ship or other vessel has come to our squadron for several months, though we are waiting for a vessel at the present time. You look very pale and thin, Uncle Homer."

222 "Perhaps I look worse than I feel," replied the planter with a faint smile. "But I have suffered a great deal of anxiety lately."

"Excuse me, Colonel Passford, but if you will allow me to install you in your stateroom, you will have abundance of time to talk with your nephew afterwards," interposed Captain Breaker, who was very busy.

"Certainly, Captain; pardon me for detaining you. I am a prisoner, and I shall need my trunk, which is in my stateroom on board of the Tallahatchie. Gill will bring it on board if you send word to him to do so," replied the colonel.

He followed the captain to his cabin. The door of the Confederate commander's room was open, and the planter exchanged a few words with him. He was shown to the other stateroom, and Punch was ordered to do all that he could for the comfort of the passenger. Captain Breaker spoke a few pleasant words with the wounded commander, and then hastened on deck.

Mr. Ballard, the second lieutenant, had again been duly installed as temporary executive officer; Mr. Walbrook had been moved up, and Mr. Bostwick, master, had become third lieutenant. As 223 usual, the engineers were Englishmen, who had come over in the Trafalgar, as well as the greater part of the crew, though the other officers were Southern gentlemen who had "retired" from the United States Navy. The foreigners were willing to remain in the engine room, and promised to do their duty faithfully as long as their wages were paid; but Leon Bolter, the first assistant engineer of the Bellevite, was sent on board of the prize to insure their fidelity.

Ensigns Palmer Drake and Richard Leyton, who were serving on board of the steamer while waiting for positions, were sent to the Tallahatchie, the first named as prizemaster, and the other as his first officer, with a prize crew of twenty men, and the two steamers got under way.

224 CHAPTER XX A VERY MELANCHOLY CONFEDERATE

Notwithstanding his military title, Colonel Homer Passford was not a soldier, though he had once been a sort of honorary head of a regiment of militia. His brother, Captain Horatio Passford, Christy's father, was a millionaire in the tenth degree. More than twenty years before the war he had assisted Homer to all the money he required to buy a plantation in Alabama, near Mobile, where he had prospered exceedingly, though his possessions had never been a tenth part of those of his wealthy brother.

Homer had married in the South, and was the father of a son and daughter, now approaching their maturity, and Corny, the son, was a soldier in the Confederate army. The most affectionate relations had always subsisted between the two families; and before the war the Bellevite had always visited Glenfield, the plantation of the colonel, at least twice a year.

225 Florry Passford, the captain's daughter, being somewhat out of health, had passed the winter before the beginning of the war at Glenfield, and was there when the enemy's guns opened upon Fort Sumter. Captain Passford had not supposed that his brother in Alabama would take part with the South in the Rebellion, and with great difficulty and risk he had gone to Glenfield in the Bellevite, for the purpose of conveying his daughter to his home at Bonnydale on the Hudson, not doubting that Homer and his family would be his passengers on the return to the North.

He was entirely mistaken in regard to the political sentiments of the colonel, and found that he was one of the most devoted and determined advocates of the Southern cause. The southern brother did not conceal his opinions, and it was plain enough to the captain that he was entirely sincere, and believed with all his mind, heart, and soul, that it was his religious, moral, and social duty to espouse what he called his country's cause; and he had done so with all his influence and his fortune. He had even gone so far in his devotion to his duty as he understood it, as to attempt to hand over the Bellevite, though she was not in 226 Mobile Bay on a warlike mission, to the new government of the South, and had taken part personally in an expedition extended to capture her.

The steam-yacht had been armed at the Bermudas, and fought her way out of the bay; and on her return to New York her owner presented her to the Government of the United States. She had done good service, and Christy had begun his brilliant career as a naval officer in the capacity of a midshipman on board of her. In spite of the hostile political attitude of the brothers to each other, the same affectionate relations had continued between the two families, for each of them believed that social and family ties should not interfere with his patriotic duty to his country.

The commander of the Confederate forces at Hilton Head—one of the highest-toned and most estimable gentlemen one could find in the North or the South—informed the author that his own brother was in command of one of the Federal ships that were bombarding his works. While Commodore Wilkes, of Mason and Slidell memory, was capturing the Southern representatives who had to be given up, his son was in the Confederate navy, and then or later was casting guns 227 at Charlotte for the use of the South: and the writer never met a more reasonable and kindly man. Fortunately our two brothers were not called upon to confront each other as foes on the battlefield or on the sea, though both of them would have done their duty in such positions.

The last time Christy had seen his Uncle Homer was when he was captured on board of the Dornoch with Captain Rombold, as he was endeavoring to obtain a passage to England as a Confederate agent for the purchase of suitable vessels to prey upon the mercantile marine of the United States. He and the commander of the Tallahatchie had been exchanged at about the same time; and they had proceeded to Nassau, where they embarked for England in a cotton steamer. There they had purchased and fitted out the Trafalgar; for the agent's drafts, in which the last of his fortune had been absorbed, could not be made available to his captors. Colonel Passford had an interview with Captain Rombold after Gill had brought his trunk on board; and it was a very sad occasion to the planter, if not to the naval officer. They had not had an opportunity to consider the disaster that had overtaken the Confederate steamer, which had 228 promised such favorable results for their cause; for the commander had been entirely occupied till he received his wound, and even then he had attended to his duties, for, as before suggested, he was a "last ditch" man. He was not fighting for the South as a mere hireling; for he had married a Southern wife, and she had enlisted all his sympathies in the cause of her people.

"I suppose we have nothing more to hope for, Captain Rombold; and we can only put our trust in the All-Wise and the All-Powerful, who never forsakes his children when they are fighting for right and justice," said Colonel Passford, after he had condoled with the commander on his wounded condition.

"We shall come out all right in the end, Colonel; don't be so cast down," replied the captain.

"I raised the money by mortgaging my plantation and what other property I had left for all the money I could get upon it to a wealthy Englishman, the one who came