Now the Kearsarge was an old enemy, constantly in pursuit, and her appearance produced, as Captain Semmes has written, great excitement on board the Alabama.  And let us here call attention to what the officers and men of the illustrious Confederate ship had been enduring for the space of two years.  During all this time they had been homeless, and without a prospect of reaching home.  They had been constantly crowded with prisoners, who devoured their provender—­of which they never had any but a precarious supply.  Their stay in any neutral harbour was necessarily short as the perching of a hawk on a bough.  Like the hawk’s in upper air, the Alabama’s safety as well as her business was on the high seas.  Miserably fed, hunted, eluding, preying, destroying—­is this a life that brave men would willingly have to be continuous?  They were fortified by the assurance of a mighty service done to their country.  They knew that they inflicted tremendous damage upon their giant foe.  They were, perhaps, supported by the sense that their captain’s unrivalled audacity had done more harm to the United States than the operations of many thousand men.  But their days were wretched; their task was sickening; it demands an imagination that can fix its eye upon stern, barren duty as a planet never darkened, always visible, for such a life as this to be carried on uncomplainingly and without a passionate longing for the bare exercise of hard blows.  In addition, they read of the reproaches heaped upon them by comfortable shore-men.  They were called pirates, and other gloomy titles.  The execrations of certain of the French and English, and of all the United States press, sounded in their ears across the ocean; but from their own country they heard little.  The South was a sealed land in comparison with the rest of the world.  Opinion spoke loudest in Europe, and though they knew that they were faithfully, gallantly, and marvellously serving their country in her sore need, the absence of any immediate comfort, either physical or moral, helped to make them keenly sensitive to virulent criticism, even to that of avowed and clamorous enemies.

It was this state of mind through the whole crew which caused the excitement on board the Alabama when the Kearsarge steamed in and out of the breakwater.  Now, and at last, our day of action has come! was the thought of every man on board.  The chivalrous give and take of battle was glorious to men who had alternately hunted and fled for so dreary a term.  They trusted for victory; but defeat itself was to be a vindication of their whole career, and they welcomed the chances gladly.