At 1.30 P.M., on the 26th November--writes Captain Semmes--showed first the United States and then our own colours to an English schooner, probably from the Bahamas to the Windward Islands, and at three captured the United States schooner Arcade from Portland, Maine, to Port au Prince, Guadaloupe, loaded with stores. The master and half-owner of the schooner was Master of the barque Saxony at the time of the loss of the Central America, and was instrumental in saving lives on that occasion, for which a handsome telescope had been presented to him. I had the pleasure of returning the glass to him, captured among the other effects of his vessel.
Took the master and crew on board (a rough sea running), and set fire to her. At 4.40 stood on our course. The blaze of the burning vessel still in sight at 8 P.M. During the night the wind lulled and became variable. Hauled down the fore and aft sails, and steered N.E. The prize had no newspapers on board, but we learned from the master that the great naval expedition which the enemy had been some time preparing had struck at Beaufort, South Carolina, on Fort Royal Sound. No result known.
After five days of hard fighting with the strong N.E. trade, blowing for the most part half a gale of wind, and with thick and dirty weather, the enemy is at length overcome, the sky clears, and the Sumter's head is turned towards Europe. And now for a time Yankee commerce was to have a respite, its relentless little enemy directing its attention exclusively towards maturing her voyage across the Atlantic. She had at this time but sixty days' water for her own crew, in addition to whom there were now the six prisoners taken from the schooner. The passage, too, would have to be made for the most part under canvas, and would probably not occupy less than fifty days. Of course, she had now but six or seven days' supply of coal--a small reserve in case of emergency, and hardly sufficient to enable her to cruise a few days on the other side, and, if possible, not go quite "empty-handed" into port.
Still the days were not altogether uneventful, and before the week was out, a fine prize ran, as it were, into her very arms. Of this capture the journal gives the following account:--