On The Blockade, Oliver Optic [best affordable ebook reader txt] 📗

read it with quite as much interest as the commander had.

"Cedar Keys," said the captain, glancing at his associate.

"That is not a long run from the station," 241 added Christy. "We are very likely to be there before to-morrow morning."

"It is about two hundred and eighty statute miles, I had occasion to ascertain a week ago when something was said about Cedar Keys," replied Captain Blowitt. "We have been making about fifteen knots, for the Bronx is a flyer, and we ought to be near our destination at about midnight. That would be an excellent time to arrive if we only had a pilot."

"Perhaps we have one," added Christy with a smile.

"Are you a pilot on this coast, Mr. Passford?" asked the commander, mistaking the smile.

"No, sir, I am not; but I remember a conversation Mr. Flint and I had with Mr. Amblen, who was engaged in some sort of a speculation in Florida when the war came on. He was so provoked at the treatment he received that he shipped in the navy at once. I only know that he had a small steamer in these waters."

"Send for Mr. Amblen at once!" exclaimed the commander, who appeared to have become suddenly excited. "There will be no moon to-night in these parts, and we may be able to 242 hurry this matter up if we have a competent pilot."

Christy called Dave, and sent him for the acting third lieutenant, for he knew that Mr. Flint had had the watch since four o'clock. Mr. Amblen was sunning himself on the quarter deck, and he promptly obeyed the summons.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Amblen, and I hope you will prove to be as useful a person as I have been led to believe you may be," said the captain.

"I shall endeavor to do my duty, sir," replied the third lieutenant, who was always very ambitious to earn the good opinion of his superiors. "I mean to do the best I can to make myself useful, Captain Blowitt."

"I know that very well; but the question now is what you know rather than what you can do as an officer. Mr. Passford informs me that you were formerly engaged in some kind of a speculation on the west coast of Florida."

"Hardly a speculation, sir, for I was engaged in the fish business," replied Mr. Amblen, laughing at the name which had been given to his calling. "When I sold a small coaster that belonged to me, I got in exchange a tug boat. I had been out of 243 health a few years before; I spent six months at Cedar Keys and Tampa, and got well. Fish were plenty here, and of a kind that bring a good price farther north. I loaded my tug with ice, and came down here in her. I did a first-rate business buying from boats and in catching fish myself, and for a time I made money, though ice was so dear that I had to sell in the South."

"Did you have a pilot on board of your tug?" asked the captain.

"No, sir; I was my own pilot. I had the charts, and I studied out the bottom, so that I knew where I was in the darkest night."

"Then you are just the person we want if you are a pilot in these waters."

"What waters, sir? We are now off Cape St. Blas and Apalachicola Bay. I have been into the bay, but I am not a pilot in those waters, as you suggest."

"I have just opened my orders, and I find we are ordered to Cedar Keys," interposed the commander.

"That is quite another thing, sir; and there isn't a foot of bottom within five miles of the Keys to which I have not been personally introduced. 244 When I was down here for my health I was on the water more than half of the time, and I learned all about the bay and coast; and I have been up the Suwanee River, which flows into the Gulf eighteen miles north of the Keys."

"I am exceedingly glad to find that we have such an excellent pilot on board. I am informed in my orders that schooners load with cotton at this place, and make an easy thing of getting to sea," added Captain Blowitt.

"I should say that it was a capital port for the Confederates to use for that sort of business. Small steamers can bring cotton down the Suwanee River, the railroad from Fernandina terminates at the Key, and this road connects with that to Jacksonville and the whole of western Florida as far as Tallahassee."

"We may find a steamer or two there."

"You may, though not one any larger than the Bronx, for there is only eleven feet of water on the bar. Probably no blockaders have yet been stationed off the port, and it is a good place to run out cotton."

"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Amblen, for the information you have given me, and your services 245 will probably be in demand this very night," added the commander, rising from his chair.

"I am ready for duty at all times, sir," replied Mr. Amblen, as he retired from the cabin.

The charts were then consulted, and sundry calculations were made. At one o'clock that night the Bronx was off Cedar Keys.

246 CHAPTER XXII A NIGHT EXPEDITION IN THE BOATS

During the evening Captain Blowitt had consulted his officers, and arranged his plans for operations, or at least for obtaining information in regard to the situation inside of North Key, where the landing place is situated. He had already arranged to give the command of the boat expedition to Christy, with the second lieutenant in another boat, Mr. Amblen being with the executive officer in the first.

"Now, Mr. Passford, I do not expect you to capture the whole State of Florida, and if you should return without accomplishing anything at all, I shall not be disappointed, but I shall feel that you have done everything that could be done," said the captain, with a very cheerful smile, when all had been arranged.

"I shall endeavor to obey my orders, Captain Blowitt, if I can do so in the exercise of a reasonable 247 prudence," replied Christy, who took in all that his superior looked, as well as all that he said.

"A reasonable prudence is decidedly good, coming from you, Mr. Passford," said the captain, laughing outright.

"Why is it decidedly good from me rather than from anybody else?" asked Christy, somewhat nettled by the remark.

"You objected once on board of the Bellevite when I mildly hinted that you might sometimes, under some circumstances, with a strong temptation before you, be just a little audacious," said the captain, still laughing, as though he were engaged in a mere joke.

"That statement is certainly qualified in almost all directions, if you will excuse me for saying so, captain," replied Christy, who was fully determined not to take offence at anything his superior might say, for he had always regarded him as one of his best friends. "If I remember rightly the mild suggestion of a criticism which you gently and tenderly applied to me was after we had brought out the Teaser from Pensacola Bay."

"That was the time. Captain Breaker sent you to ascertain, if you could, where the Teaser was, 248 and you reported by bringing her out, which certainly no one expected you would do, and I believe this part of the programme carried out on that excursion was not mentioned in your orders."

"It was not; but if I had a good chance to capture the steamer, was it my duty to pass over that chance, and run the risk of letting the vessel get out?"

"On the contrary, it was your duty, if you got a good chance, to capture the steamer."

"And that is precisely what I did. I did not lose a man, or have one wounded in the expedition; and I have only to be penitent for being audacious," laughed Christy; and he was laughing very earnestly, as though the extra cachinnation was assumed for a purpose. "I suppose I ought to dress myself in ash cloth and sashes, shut myself up in my state room always when off duty, and shed penitential tears from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, and during the lone watches of the night, and in fortifying my soul against the monstrous sin of audacity. I will think of it."

"I hope you have no feeling about this matter, 249 Mr. Passford," said the captain, rising from his chair and taking Christy by the hand.

"Not a particle, Captain Blowitt. I am absolutely sure that you would have done precisely what I did, if you had been in my situation," protested Christy. "About the last thing my father talked about to me when we parted in this cabin in New York Harbor was the necessity of prudence and discretion in the discharge of my duties; and I am sure his advice saved me from falling into the traps set for me by Hungerford and Pawcett, and enabled me to capture two of the enemy's crack steamers."

"I will never use the word audacity or the adjective audacious to you again, Christy. I see that it nettles you, to say the least," added the captain, pressing his hand with more earnestness.

"I am perfectly willing you should apply both words to me when I deserve it. Audacity means boldness, impudence, according to Stormonth. Audacious means very bold, daring, impudent. It may have been bold to run out the Teaser, and the enemy would even call it impudent, for the meaning of a word sometimes depends upon which side you belong to. My father was quite as impudent 250 as I was when he ran the Bellevite out of Mobile Bay, under the guns of Fort Morgan. He was audacious, wasn't he?"

"We should hardly apply that word to him."

"Why not? Simply because my father was forty-five years old when he told Captain Breaker to do it. If I were only thirty years old I should not be audacious. I am a boy, and therefore anything that I do is daring, audacious, impudent, imprudent."

"I rather think you are right, Mr. Passford, and it is your age more than the results of your actions that is the basis of our judgment," said Captain Blowitt.

"I wish to add seriously, captain, as a friend and not as an officer, I do not claim that the command of this expedition should be given to me because I am first lieutenant of the Bronx, or for any other reason," added Christy with an earnest expression. "Perhaps it would be better to give the command to the second lieutenant; and if you do so, I assure you, upon my honor, that it will not produce a particle of feeling in my mind. I shall honor, respect, and love you as I have always, Captain Blowitt."

251 "My dear fellow, you are entirely misunderstanding me," protested the commander, as earnestly as his subordinate had spoken. "I give you the command of this expedition because I honestly and sincerely believe you are the very best person on board to whom I can commit such a responsibility."

"That is enough, captain, and a great deal more than you were under any obligations to say to me; and I shall obey my orders with all the prudence and discretion I can bring to bear upon them," said Christy, taking the captain's offered hand. "If I fail it will not be because I do not try to be prudent."

"There is such a thing as being too prudent, and I hope that nothing which has been said to you by your father or by me will drive you to the other extreme."

Though this conversation had at times been very animated, Christy was glad that it had taken place, for it gave him a better insight into his own standing than he had before. He did not look upon it as a very great affair to command a couple of boats, in a night expedition, for he had recently commanded two steamers, and brought them off 252 victorious. He had it in mind to ask the captain to send Flint in command of the expedition, though it would compel him, on account of his rank, to remain inactive on board of the Bronx; but he could not do this, after what had been said, without leaving some evidence that he was disaffected by what the commander had said to him about audacity.

It was found after a calculation of the run very carefully made that the Bronx would arrive too soon at her destination, and she