Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/158

116 knew a French fleet was assembled. Working like beavers and protected by a headland there, we finally succeeded in shifting the Blakeley gun. We then stood out to sea, where, after we had got safely beyond the three-mile limit, we stopped. Captain Maury called all hands to the mast and read his orders, hoisted the Confederate flag and his pennant, and declared the Confederate States cruiser Georgia to be in commission.

His remarks were received with three lusty cheers. He then asked the men who were going with us to step forward and enlist for three years or the war, but alas, a sea-lawyer had been at work, and not a man came forward. The spokesman demanded higher wages on account of the dangers of the service, and when told that the Georgia was a man-of-war and the pay was fixed by law, they, to a man, went over the side and boarded the tug. To our surprise nine men of the crew of the late merchantman Japan now stepped forward and said they would like to go with us, and of course they were accepted at once. With these men as a nucleus for a crew, we cast off the Alar's line and never saw or heard of her or the men on board of her again, and never wanted to. We afterwards learned that our presence at Ushant and on the coast of France had been signaled to Brest and that a fast frigate had been sent in all haste to capture us for our breach of French neutrality; but we never saw her.

It was the 9th of April, 1863, when this little friendless ship of only about five hundred and fifty tons started on her long and hazardous cruise. She was as absolutely unfitted for the work as any vessel could conceivably be she lay very low in the water and was very long for her beam; her engines were gear engines, that is, a large wheel fitted with lignum-vitæ cogs turned the iron cogs on the shaft, and frequently the wooden cogs would break. When they did it was worse than if a shrapnel shell had burst in the engine room, as they flew in every direction, endangering