THE CIVIL WAR 227 



had left her station off the Pass a TOutre and had chased a sail 

 out of sight. 



For weeks the Sumter had been waiting for such a moment. 

 Getting up steam, tripping anchor with all haste, and exchang- 

 ing pilots at the last moment, Semmes drove his vessel over the 

 bar where there was barely room to pass a grounded Bremen 

 ship. 



"Now, Captain," the pilot cried, as she thrust her nose into 

 the open sea, "you are all clear. Give her hell and let her 

 go!" 



The Sumter slackened speed to drop the pilot, then ran for her 

 life. The Brooklyn, instead of going out of sight, had run only 

 seven or eight miles to the west, where one of the spurs of the 

 Mississippi delta had hidden her, and was now returning with 

 her guns manned and smoke belching from her funnel. 



The Sumter, better on the wind than the Brooklyn, carried 

 both sail and steam, and when the two vessels headed into a 

 fresh breeze, the Brooklyn fell off to leeward and presently 

 was forced to let fly sheets and halliards, and clew up and furl 

 her sails. From that moment the Sumter gained easily, and the 

 Brooklyn soon gave up the chase and returned to Pass k T Outre. 



Thus escaped Raphael Semmes, then commander in the 

 Southern navy, but afterward captain and rear-admiral, one 

 of two who did individually more damage to the American 

 whaling fleets than any one else in history. The other was 

 James Iredell Wadell of the Shenandoah. 



In the Sumter, though, Semmes merely started his career. 

 On December 8, 1861, having meanwhile raided commerce 

 with a free hand among the West Indies and off the coast of 

 South America, he sighted a "taut" barque "with sky sail pole 

 and under topsails." The weather was thick, the vessel was so 

 near the Sumter as to startle her crew, and Semmes, at first 

 mistaking the stranger for a cruiser, ordered his smokestack 

 raised and fires started. 



Warily approaching the stranger, the Sumter ran up the 

 Stars and Stripes. The stranger showed the Stars and Stripes 

 in return. Prepared to fight or run, and keeping to the wind- 



