Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/168



The Doldrums—Water-spouts—Bahia—Meet the Alabama—Changing of the Confederate Flag—Corsairos—Brazilian—Midshipman Anderson makes a pillow out of Captain Semmes—U.S.S. Niagara and Mohican on our trail—"Does he want his pretty paint spoiled?"—Refused permission to depart after 4 P.M.—Brazilian battery fires one shot as we pass out.

ships without making any captures was getting to be a little monotonous. Some of the vessels we halted had captains who were cross and ugly about being detained while we examined their papers, while others seemed to enjoy the adventure of being held up by a "pirate" and showed our boarding officers every hospitality in the way of wines, liquors, and cigars. We passed close to a man-of-war and showed her our true colors, which attention she reciprocated by running up the British flag and dipping it to us. Every time this occurred we would congratulate ourselves, insisting that the mere courtesy constituted a recognition of the Confederate States.

Exactly where we were, the captain and the navigator alone knew. The old sailors told me that we were in the "doldrums"—as they call that portion of the Atlantic Ocean which lies in the equatorial belt extending from about ten degrees north of the Equator to the same distance south of it: this they knew by the baffling winds, squalls from every point of the compass, and "Irishmen's hurricanes," as they call dead calms. Another unfailing sign to them was the numerous great waterspouts whirling around in every direction. To see one of these spouts in first process of formation is indeed a wonderful sight—first the whirlwind on the surface of the sea and the eddying of a cloud above, then the formation of the column of water twisting and swaying like the body of some huge serpent as it rises out of the sea, the loud, roaring sound and the great commotion of the water around it until it has