Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[226] and on the 17th of October we had reached the latitude of 11° 37′. From this time, until the 22d, we had a constant series of bad weather, the barometer settling to 29.80, and the wind blowing half a gale, most of the time. Sometimes the wind would go all around the compass, and the weather would change half a dozen times, in twenty-four hours. On the last-mentioned day, the weather became again settled, and being now in latitude 14°, we had passed out of the calm belt, and began to receive the first breathings of the north-east trade-wind.

On the 24th, we chased and hove to a French brig, called La Mouche Noire, from Nantes, bound for Martinique. She had been out forty-two days, had no newspapers on board, and had no news to communicate. We boarded her under the United States flag, and when the boarding-officer apologized to the master for the trouble we had given him, in heaving him to, in the exercise of our belligerent right of search, he said, with an admirable naivete, he had heard the United States were at war, but he did not recollect with whom! Admirable Frenchman! wonderful simplicity, to care nothing about newspapers, and to know nothing about wars!

On the 25th, we overhauled that rara avis in mare, a Prussian ship. The 27th was Sunday; we had a gentle breeze from the north-east, with a smooth sea, and were enjoying the fine morning, with our awnings spread, scarcely expecting to be disturbed, when the cry of ‘Sail ho!’ again rang from the mast-head. We had been making preparations for Sunday muster; Jack having already taken down from its hidingplace his Sunday hat, and adjusted its ribbons, and now being in the act of ‘overhauling’ his bag, for the ‘mustering-shirt and trousers.’ All these preparations were at once suspended, the firemen were ordered below, there was a passing to and fro of engineers, and in a few minutes more the welcome black smoke came pouring out of the Sumter's chimney. Bounding away over the sea, we soon began to raise the strange sail from the deck. She was a fore-and-aft schooner of that peculiar model and rig already described as belonging to the New Englander, and nobody else, and we felt certain, at once, that we had flushed the enemy. The little craft was ‘closehauled,’