his bewilderment, and make up his mind that we were really beaten, my ship went down. I acquit him, therefore, entirely, of any intention of permitting my men to drown, or even of gross negligence, which would be almost as criminal. It was his judgment which was entirely at fault. I had known, and sailed with him, in the old service, and knew him then to be a humane and Christian gentleman. What the war may have made of him, it is impossible to say. It has turned a great deal of the milk of human kindness to gall and wormwood.

LITH BY A HOEN & CO BALTO.

The Combat between the Alabama and the Kearsage, off Cherbourg, on the 19th of June, 1864.

CHAPTER LIV.

OTHER INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE ALA

BAMA AND THE KEARSARGE - -THE RESCUE OF OFFICERS AND SEAMEN BY THE ENGLISH STEAM-YACHT DEERHOUND -THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DE

MANDS THAT THEY BE GIVEN UP - BRITISH GOVERNMENT REFUSES COMPLIANCE – THE RESCUED PERSONS NOT PRISONERS

THE INCONSISTENCY OF THE FEDERAL

SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

No

OTWITHSTANDING my enemy went out chivalrously armored, to encounter a ship whose wooden sides were entirely without protection, I should have beaten him in the first thirty minutes of the engagement, but for the defect of my ammunition, which had been two years on board, and become much deteriorated by cruising in a variety of climates. I had directed my men to fire low, telling them that it was better to fire too low than too high, as the ricochet in the former case—the water being smooth-would remedy the defect of their aim, whereas it was of no importance to cripple the masts and spars of a steamer. By Captain Winslow's own account, the Kearsarge was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armored, of course, my shot and shell, except in so far as fragments of the latter may have damaged his spars and rigging, fell harmless into the sea. The Alabama was not mortally wounded, as the reader has seen, until after the Kearsarge had been firing at her an hour and ten minutes. In the mean time, in spite of the armor of the Kearsarge, I had mortally wounded that ship in the first thirty minutes of the engagement. I say, "mortally wounded her," because the wound would have proved mortal, but for the defect of my ammuni tion above spoken of. I lodged a rifled percussion shell near

her stern post-where there were no chains-which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. If the cap had performed its duty, and exploded the shell, I should have been called upon to save Captain Winslow's crew from drowning, instead of his being called upon to save mine. On so slight an incident—the defect of a percussion-cap-did the battle hinge. The enemy were very proud of this shell. It was the only trophy they ever got of the Alabama! We fought her until she would no longer swim, and then we gave her to the waves. This shell, thus imbedded in the hull of the ship, was carefully cut out, along with some of the timber, and sent to the Navy Department in Washington, to be exhibited to admiring Yankees. It should call up the blush of shame to the cheek of every Northern man who looks upon it. It should remind him of his ship going into action with concealed armor; it should remind him that his ship fired into a beaten antagonist five times, after her colors had been struck and when she was sinking; and it should remind him of the drowning of helpless men, struggling in the water for their lives!

Perhaps this latter spectacle was something for a Yankee to gloat upon. The Alabama had been a scourge and a terror to them for two years. She had destroyed their property! Yankee property! Curse upon the "pirates," let them drown! At least this was the sentiment uttered by that humane and Christian gentleman, to whom I have before had occasion to allude in these pages-Mr. William H. Seward-one of the chief Vandals, who found themselves in the possession and control of the once glorious "Government of the States," during the war. This gentleman, in one of his despatches to Mr. Adams, prompting him as to what he should say to the English Government, on the subject of the rescue of my men by the Deerhound, remarks: "I have to observe, upon these remarks of Earl Russell, that it was the right of the Kearsarge that the pirates should drown, unless saved by humane exertions of the officers and crew of that vessel, or by their own efforts, without the aid of the Deerhound. The men were either already actually prisoners, or they were desperately pursued by the Kearsarge. If they had perished [by being permitted to be drowned, in cold blood after the action], the Kearsarge would have had the