Disappointment—­Out of the track—­The Levi Starbuck—­Fresh vegetables —­News—­The other side of the case—­Kindness repaid—­The T.B.  Wales—­A family—­Volunteers—­In man-of-war trim.

The month of October went out as it came in with severe and blustering weather.  The Alabama was still upwards of two hundred miles from New York, and it seemed as though a change would become necessary in her plans.  Ever since starting upon his adventurous cruise, it had been a favorite scheme with Captain Semmes to make his appearance off this the very chief of the enemy’s ports, and, if not strong enough actually to threaten the place itself, at all events to make a few captures within sight of the capital city of the North.  It had been, therefore, a special disappointment to find himself baffled by a continued succession of hostile winds and contrary currents; and even the brilliant success that had thus far attended him in the capture of twenty-one vessels and the destruction of property to very nearly a million of dollars, seemed hardly to compensate for the failure of his pet project.

It was fast becoming evident, however, that the scheme for putting in an appearance off New York must be abandoned, at all events for the present; and on the 30th October the chief engineer was consulted as to the amount of coal remaining in the bunkers.  The report was unfavorable.  Four days’ fuel only was left; and it was clear that even had the vessel been nearer than she was to her intended cruising ground, this would have been rather a short supply with which to venture on so dangerous an experiment.  Reluctantly, therefore, the scheme was relinquished, the fires let down, propeller hoisted up again, and sail made to the southward and eastward en route for the coal depot.

The ship was now out of the track of commerce, and for some time scarcely a vessel was seen.  The 2d November, however, brought a prize in the shape of the ship Levi Starbuck, five days out from New Bedford, on a whaling voyage of thirty months to the Pacific Ocean.  Like all whalers, she carried a stronger crew than is common with other vessels of similar tonnage, and twenty-nine prisoners were transferred from her to the Alabama.  Being bound, too, on so long a cruise, she was well furnished with all necessaries, and the captor was enabled to supply himself from her with various articles of which, by this time, and after the rough weather he had experienced, he had begun to stand somewhat sorely in need.

Not the least highly-prized among the spoils of the Levi Starbuck was a noble collection of cabbages and turnips, fresh from their native soil!  These were, indeed, invaluable.  The Alabama had now been upwards of seventy days at sea, and during nearly the whole of that period her crew had subsisted entirely on salted provisions.  Happily, as yet, no ill effects had appeared; but the fresh vegetables came most opportunely to ward off any danger of that scourge of the sailor’s existence, scurvy, to which a longer confinement to salt diet must inevitably have exposed them.