Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/45

 England, as soon as I saw the wheels of the James Adger in motion. The New England formed the centre of a group of steamers and propellers, all heavily laden with human freight. The troops had been marched aboard the night before, in the expectation of an immediate departure; but the means of landing (scows and surf-boats) could not be secured until this morning, and the division got under way only a short time before sundown.

The destination of General Ferry's command was Stono Inlet. It was to make a landing on Cole's Island, already occupied for some days by a regiment. The fleet had hardly crossed the bar when a severe gale suddenly sprang up, and continued to blow all night. When the sun rose on Friday morning, the sorry discovery was made that the transports had been scattered, and lost in the storm most of the surf-boats they had been towing. In the course of the forenoon, however, the vessels all hove again in sight, but, low tide preventing their passage over the bar, they were ordered to lie off the entrance until high water. The New England having too deep a draught for a safe crossing, she proceeded to this port in order to transfer part of her load to another steamer.

North Edisto Harbor presented, when we entered it, an aspect at once pleasing and imposing. Its placid waters, with well-defined, graceful contours of shore lines, just contrasted and variegated enough to give tone to the picture, formed an idyllic ensemble strangely contrasting with the numerous novel and formidable engines of naval war riding at anchor within its sheltering limits. All the ironclads excepting the New-Ironsides, with the James Adger, Seneca, Sebago, and Bibb, had arrived. Around them floated a great flock of sailing craft—mortar, ordnance, buoy and supply schooners; the Adams Express steamer Mary Sanford, the Locust Point and other propellers, together with several ever-puffing, ever-rushing tugboats, imparting additional liveliness to the scene. Before leaving Port Royal, I had obtained Admiral Dupont's permission to witness the operations of the ironclads from the New-Ironsides. Soon after arriving, I boarded the James Adger in order to ascertain the best mode of reaching the former, and had a passage provided for off Charleston on the survey steamer Bibb, to which I transferred myself and baggage forthwith from the New England. My reception by Acting-Ensign Robert Platt, the commander of the Bibb in the absence of Captain C. O. Boutelle of the Coast Survey, was as courteous as I could possibly desire it to be.

Instead of dying out, as expected in the morning, the wind grew