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

[582] packet. We received a paper from her, printed at the antipodes, but there was not much in it, besides the proceedings of the Australian Parliament, news from the gold-diggings, and the price of wool; in neither of which subjects were we much interested.

On the next day but a solitary passenger came over the road. It was late at night when she made her appearance— there being a bright moon and a brisk breeze. We made sail in chase, and the chase, taking the alarm, gave us a very pretty run for a few hours. We overhauled her, however, at length, and fired the usual blank cartridge, to heave her to. She was an hermaphrodite brig, and might be, for aught we could see, in the uncertain light, American. The gun had no effect. We waited a few minutes for a response, but none coming, we fired again—sending a shot whizzing, this time, over the little craft. Still no response. We were now only a few hundred yards distant. What could the fellow mean? All was as silent on board the chase as death, and not a tack or sheet had been started. We ran now almost on board of her, and hailing her, commanded her to heave to. Great confusion followed. We could hear voices speaking in a foreign tongue, and presently a disorderly array of sails whipping and flapping in the wind, and of yards swinging to and fro, presented itself. At last the little craft managed to come to the wind, and make a halt. She proved to be a Portuguese brig, and the crew had been so alarmed, at being chased and fired at, by night, as to lose all presence of mind, and become incapable of any action whatever, until they were somewhat reassured, by the near presence of our ship and the sound of our voices. She was bound from Pernambuco to Lisbon, with a cargo of hides and sugar. It was, indeed, something like a ghost-chase, to see the Alabama coming, in the dead of night after the little craft, with her seven-league boots on, and those awful trysails of hers spread out in the moonlight like so many winding-sheets.

On the day after this adventure, a Dutch bark and an English brig came along; and on the same night, we boarded the English four-master, the Sarah Sands, from the East Indies for Falmouth. At daylight, the next morning, the look-out at the mast-head began to cry sails, until he reported as many as