Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/142

102 from nausea he could actually joke! I remember once entering his stateroom where he was seated with a Bible on his lap and a basin alongside of him. I told him that there was a ship in sight, and between paroxysms he said, "Sometimes we see a ship, and sometimes ship a sea!"

Not knowing of his world-wide celebrity, I was surprised to see the deference paid him by foreigners. We had no sooner settled ourselves at the hotel than the governor sent an aide to tell Lieutenant Maury that he would be pleased to receive him in his private capacity at the Government House. In Europe the commodore was only known as "the great Lieutenant Maury"; they entirely ignored any promotions which might have come to him. The commandant of Fort St. George also called on him, but took pains to explain that it was the great scientist to whom he was paying homage, and not the Confederate naval officer. As the commodore's aide I came in for a little of the reflected glory and had the pleasure of accompanying him to a dinner given in his honor on board of H.M.S. Immortality at Port Hamilton. She was a beautiful frigate and her officers were very kind to me.

We remained in Bermuda for more than two weeks waiting for the Royal Mail Steamer from St. Thomas, on which we were to take passage for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Simultaneously with her arrival the U.S. sloops-of-war San Jacinto and Mohican put in an appearance, but did not enter the harbor, cruising instead just outside the three-mile limit and in the track the British ship Delta would have to follow. Instantly the rumor spread that they were going to take Commodore Maury out of the ship as soon as she got outside, color being lent to this rumor by the fact that it was the San Jacinto which had only a year before taken the Confederate Commissioners, Mason and Slidell, out of the Royal Mail steamship Trent—and I must say that we felt quite uneasy.

On the day of our departure a Mr. Bourne, a gentleman