Venezuelans, themselves, to decide. The only government I could know in Venezuela was the de facto government, for the time being, and that, by his own showing, was in the hands of his antagonists.” Here the conversation closed, and my visitor, who had the bearing and speech of a cultivated gentleman, departed. The jottings of my diary for the next few days, will perhaps now inform the reader, of our movements, better than any other form of narrative.
July 19th.—Wind unusually blustering this morning, with partial obscuration of the heavens. The engineers are busy, overhauling and repairing damages to their engine and boilers; the gunner is at work, polishing up his battery and ventilating his magazine, and the sailors are busy renewing ratlines and tarring down their rigging. An English bark entered the harbor to-day from Liverpool.
July 20th.—Painting and refitting ship; got off the new fore-topmast from the shore. It is a good pine stick, evidently from our Southern States, and has been well fashioned. The monthly packet from the island of St. Thomas arrived, to-day, bringing newspapers from the enemy’s country as late as the 26th of June. We get nothing new from these papers, except that the Northern bee-hive is all agog, with the marching and countermarching of troops.
July 21st.—Fresh trade-winds, with flying clouds—atmosphere highly charged with moisture, but no rain. This being Sunday, we mustered and inspected the crew. The washer-women have decidedly improved the appearance of the young officers, the glistening of white shirt-bosoms and collars having been somewhat unusual on board of the Sumter, of late. The crew look improved too, by their change of diet, and the use of antiscorbutics, which have been supplied to them, at the request of the surgeon; though some of them, having been on shore, “on liberty,” have brought off a blackened eye. No matter—the more frequently Jack settles his accounts, on shore, the fewer he will have to settle on board ship, in breach of discipline. We read, at the muster, to-day, the finding and sentence of the first court-martial, that has sat on board the Sumter, since she reached the high seas.
July 22d.—Warped alongside a wharf, in the edge of the town, and commenced receiving coal on board. Refitting, and repainting ship. In the afternoon, I took a lonely stroll through the town, mainly in the suburbs. It is a quaint, picturesque old place, with some few modern houses, but the general air is that of dilapidation, and a decay of trade. The lower classes are simple, and primitive in their habits, and but little suffices to supply their wants. The St. Thomas packet sailed, to-day, and, as a consequence, the Federal cruisers, in and about that island, will have intelligence of our whereabouts, in four or five days. To mislead them, I have told the pilot, and several gentlemen from the shore, in great confidence, that I am going back to cruise on the coast of Cuba. The packet will of course take that intelligence to St. Thomas.
July 23d.—Still coaling, refitting and painting. Weather more cloudy, and wind not so constantly fresh, within the last few days. Having taken sights for our chronometers, on the morning after our arrival, and again to-day, I have been enabled to verify their rates. They are running very well. The chronometer of the Golden Rocket proves to be a good instrument. We fix the longitude of Curaçoa to be 68° 58′ 30″, west of Greenwich.
July 24th.—Sky occasionally obscured, with a moderate trade-wind. Our men have all returned from their visits to the shore, except one, a simple lad named Orr, who, as I learn, has been seduced away, by a Yankee skipper, in port, aided by the Boston hotel-keeper, and our particular friend, the consul. As these persons have tampered with my whole crew, I am gratified to know, that there has been but one traitor found among them.
We had now been a week in Curaçoa, during which time, besides recruiting, and refreshing my crew, I had made all the necessary preparations for another cruise. The ship had been thoroughly overhauled, inside and out, and her coal-bunkers were full of good English coal. It only remained for us to put to sea. Accordingly, at twelve o’clock precisely, on the day last above mentioned, as had been previously appointed, the Sumter, bidding farewell to her new-made friends, moved gracefully out of the harbor—this time, amid the waving of handkerchiefs, in female hands, as well as of hats in the hands of the males; the quay being lined, as before, to see us depart. The photographer took a last shot at the ship, as she glided past his sanctum, and we looked with some little interest to the future numbers of that “Journal of Civilization,” vulgarly yclept “Harper’s Weekly,” for the interesting portrait; which came along in due time, accompanied by a lengthy description, veracious, of course, of the “Pirate.”
Curaçoa lies a short distance off the coast of Venezuela, between Laguayra, and Puerto Cabello, and as both of these places had some commerce with the United States, I resolved to look into them. The morning after our departure found us on a smooth sea, with a light breeze off the land. The mountains, back of Laguayra, loomed up blue, mystic, and majestic, at a distance of about thirty miles, and the lookout, at the mast-head, was on the qui vive for strange sails. He had not to wait long. In the tropics, there is very little of that bewitching portion of the twenty-four hours, which, in other parts of the world, is called twilight. Day passes into night, and night into day, almost at a single bound. The rapidly approaching dawn had scarcely revealed to us the bold outline of the coast, above mentioned, when sail ho! resounded from the mast-head. The sail bore on our port-bow, and was standing obliquely toward us. We at once gave chase, and at half-past six A. M., came up with, and captured the schooner Abby Bradford, from New York, bound for Puerto Cabello.
We knew our prize to be American, long before she showed us her colors. She was a “down-East,” fore-and-aft schooner, and there are no other such vessels in the world. They are as thoroughly marked, as the Puritans who build them, and there is no more mistaking the “cut of their jib.” The little schooner was provision laden, and there was no attempt to cover her cargo. The news of the escape of the Sumter had not reached New York, at the date of her sailing, and the few privateers that we had put afloat, at the beginning of the war, had confined their operations to our own, and the enemy’s coasts. Hence the neglect of the owners of the Bradford, in not providing her with some good English, or Spanish certificates, protesting that her cargo was neutral. The “old flag” was treated very tenderly on the present occasion. The “flaunting lie,” which Mr. Horace Greeley had told us, should “insult no sunny sky,” was hauled down, and stowed away in the quartermaster’s bag described a few pages back.
The Bradford being bound for Puerto Cabello, and that port being but a short distance, under my lee, I resolved to run down, with the prize, and try my hand with my friend Castro’s opponent, the de facto President of Venezuela, to see whether I could not prevail upon him, to admit my prizes into his ports. I thought, surely, an arrangement could be made with some of these beggarly South American republics, the revenue of which did not amount to a cargo of provisions, annually, and which were too weak, besides, to be worth kicking by the stronger powers. What right had they, thought I, to be putting on the airs of nations, and talking about acknowledging other people, when they had lived a whole generation, themselves, without the acknowledgment of Spain.
But, as the reader will see, I reckoned without my host. I found that they had a wholesome fear of the Federal gun-boats, and that even their cupidity could not tempt them to be just, or generous. If they had admitted my prizes into their ports, I could, in the course of a few months, have made those same ports more busy with the hum and thrift of commerce, than they had ever been before; I could have given a new impulse to their revolutions, and made them rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a pronunciamiento, once a week. The bait was tempting, but there stood the great lion in their path—the model Republic. The fact is, I must do this model Republic the justice to say, that it not only bullied the little South American republics, but all the world besides. Even old John Bull, grown rich, and plethoric, and asthmatic and gouty, trembled when he thought of his rich argosies, and of the possibility of Yankee privateers chasing them.
Taking the Bradford in tow, then, we squared away for Puerto Cabello, but darkness came on before we could reach
