A Victorious Union | Page 4

them as model officers," replied the first lieutenant.
"And so they are: you are quite right, my dear boy; but it is possible for
them to be all you say, and yet, like the young man of great possessions
in the Scripture, to lack one thing. I should not dare to exchange my
second and third lieutenants for any others if I had the opportunity."
"I confess that I do not understand you yet, Captain."
The commander rose from his seat, stretched himself, and then looked
about the deck. Taking his camp-stool in his hand he carried it over to
the port side of the quarter-deck, and planted it close to the bulwarks.
The second lieutenant was the officer of the deck, and was pacing the
planks on the starboard side, while the lookouts in the foretop and on
the top-gallant forecastle were attending closely to their duty, doubtless
with a vision of more prize money floating through their brains.
The Bellevite, with the fires banked in the furnaces, was at anchor off
the entrance to Mobile Bay, about two miles east of Sand Island
Lighthouse, and the same distance south of the narrow neck of land on
the western extremity of which Fort Morgan is located. Her commander
had chosen this position for a purpose; for several weeks before, while
the Bellevite was absent on a special mission, a remarkably fast

steamer called the Trafalgar had run the blockade inward.
Captain Passford, Senior, through his agents in England, had some
information in regard to this vessel, which he had sent to Captain
Breaker. Unlike most of the blockade-runners built for this particular
service, she had been constructed in the most substantial manner for an
English millionaire, who had insisted that she should be built as strong
as the best of steel could make her, for he intended to make a voyage
around the world in her.
Unfortunately for the owner of the Trafalgar, who was a lineal
descendant of a titled commander in that great naval battle, he fell from
his horse in a fox chase, and was killed before the steamer was fully
completed. His heir had no taste for the sea, and the steamer was sold at
a price far beyond her cost; and the purchaser had succeeded in getting
her into Mobile Bay with a valuable cargo. She was of about eight
hundred tons burden, and it was said that she could steam twenty knots
an hour. She was believed to be the equal of the Alabama and the
Shenandoah. The Bellevite had been especially notified not to allow the
Trafalgar to escape. She had recently had her bottom cleaned, and her
engine put in perfect order for the service expected of her, for she was
the fastest vessel on the blockade.
When Captain Breaker had assured himself that he was out of hearing
of the officer of the deck, he invited Christy to take a seat at his side.
He spoke in a low tone, and was especially careful that no officer
should hear him.
"Perhaps I meddle with what does not concern me, Christy; but I
cannot help having ideas of my own," said the commander, when he
was satisfied that no one but the executive officer could hear him.
"There is Fort Morgan, with Fort Gaines three miles from it on the
other side of the channel. Mobile Point, as it is called at this end of the
neck, extends many miles to the eastward. It is less than two miles wide
where it is broadest, and not over a quarter of a mile near Pilot Town."
"I have studied the lay of the land very carefully, for I have had some
ideas of my own," added Christy, as the commander paused.

"If Fort Morgan had been Fort Sumter, with bad memories clinging to
it, an effort would have been made to capture it, either by bombardment
by the navy, or by regular approaches on the part of the army,"
continued Captain Breaker. "They are still pounding away at Fort
Sumter, because there would be a moral in its capture and the reduction
of Charleston, for the war began there. Such an event would send a
wave of rejoicing through the North, though it would be of less real
consequence than the opening of Mobile Bay and the cleaning out of
the city of Mobile. Except Wilmington, it is the most pestilent resort for
blockade-runners on the entire coast."
"Then you think Fort Morgan can be reduced from the land side?"
asked Christy, deeply interested in the conversation.
"I have little doubt of it; and while I believe Farragut will resort to his
favorite plan of running by the forts here, as he has done by those of the
Mississippi, the army will be planted