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a large schooner, evidently American, bound to the southward, and eastward.
We gave chase at once, but as the schooner was to windward of us, a considerable distance, the chase promised to be long, without the aid of steam, and this, for reasons already explained, I was averse to using, though we kept, at all times, banked fires in the furnaces, and warm water in the boilers.
The stranger hugged his wind very closely, this being always the best point of sailing with schooners; but this was also the best point of sailing with the
Alabama. The reader has seen, that she always put on her seven-league boots, when she had a chance of drawing aft the sheets of those immense trysails of hers.
We gained perceptibly, but the wind was falling light, and it was to be feared night would overtake us, before we could bring the chase within reach of our guns.
She was still good four miles to windward of us, when I resolved to try the effect of a solid shot from my rifled pivot, on the forecastle.
Elevating the gun some ten degrees, we let fly the bolt.
It threw up the water in a beautiful jet, within less than half a mile of her!
It was enough.
The schooner came to the wind, with the
Federal colors at her masthead, and awaited our approach.
Upon being boarded, she proved to be the
Crenshaw, three days out from New York, and bound for
Glasgow, in Scotland.
The Crenshaw was grain-laden, though rather small for a member of the ‘junk fleet,’ and there was the usual number of certificates, and British consular seals on board of her, vouching, upon good Yankee oaths, that her cargo was neutral.
It was amusing to see how these merchants clung to the British seal, and appealed to the British power, when their grain sacks were in danger.
But it was all to no purpose.
I would have respected scrupulously any bona fide neutral ownership of property, but I knew all these certificates to be fraudulent.
Fraudulent as the transactions were, however, some of the shippers might have imposed upon me, if they had only known how to prepare their vouchers.
But they were such bunglers, that they committed the most glaring mistakes.
The New York merchant is a pretty sharp fellow, in the matter of shaving paper, getting up false invoices, and ‘doing’ the custom-house; but the laws of nations, which had had little connection, heretofore,
