Page:The Fall of Maximilan's Empire.djvu/40

32 than a good wetting. Another danger lay in the capriciousness of the weather, northers springing up frequently without the usual warning, and making it extremely difficult to come out of the river mouth; this done, there remained hours of heavy pulling dead to windward to reach the ship. Once they were able to afford assistance to others more helpless than themselves. It was blowing fresh, with the wind increasing, and they saw a sail-boat inshore of them making signals of distress. Running down there, they-found it to be a native boat that had left the Boca an hour before them to take Colonel McLean and his wife (who was a daughter of General Sumner of the U.S. Army), and Major Howell, of Richmond, Va., off to the "Tacony." These gentlemen, who had fought on the losing side in the civil war, had gone to Mexico after the collapse of the Confederacy, and, becoming disgusted, were now trying to reach the United States again. They were taken into the launch, which, after a hard pull, succeeded in reaching the dulce domum gun-boat at half-past eleven that evening. There is no doubt that their little boat would soon have swamped had not the launch taken them off. They were afterwards sent up to the city, and, through the exertions of Mr. Saulnier, the U.S. Consul, were permitted to take passage in a Spanish steamer which sailed shortly afterwards for Havana.