ys elapsed before all could
be got off. By the end of January, we were all once more on board our
former ships. But our return was far from triumphant. We, who only
seven weeks ago had set out in the surest confidence of glory, and I
may add, of emolument, were brought back dispirited and dejected. Our
ranks were woefully thinned, our chiefs slain, our clothing tattered
and filthy, and our discipline in some degree injured. A gloomy
silence reigned throughout the armament, except when it was broken by
the voice of lamentation over fallen friends. The interior of each
ship presented a scene well calculated to prove the misadventures of
human hope and human prudence. On reaching the fleet, we found that a
splendid regiment, the 40th Foot, of one thousand men, had just
arrived to reinforce us, ignorant of the fatal issue of our attack.
But the coming of thrice their number could not recover what was
lost, or recall the fateful past. There was no welcome, nor
rejoicing; so great was the despondency that no attention was given
to the event. A sullen indifference as to what might happen next
seemed to have succeeded all our wonted curiosity, and confidence of
success in every undertaking.

On the 4th of February, the fleet weighed anchor and set sail, though
detained by adverse winds near the shore of Cat Island until the 7th,
when it put to sea. Our course, towards the east, led to the
conjecture that we were steering towards Mobile. Nor was it long
before we came in sight of the bay which bears that name.

SECOND ATTACK ON FORT BOWYER, MOBILE BAY.

So great and so repeated had been the reverses of the British arms, that
an opportunity to retrieve lost prestige, even in a small degree, could
not well be permitted to pass unimproved. The great flotilla of sixty
vessels, with the fragments of the shattered army, which set sail with
flags and pennants gayly flying in the breeze from Negril Bay, Jamaica,
but a little over two months ago, was still a power upon the sea, at a
safe distance from Jackson's triumphant army. The little outpost of a
fort that guarded Mobile Bay, which had inflicted a heavy loss on, and
beaten off, a squadron of the enemy's ships a few months before, lay in
their path homeward, and it was determined to invest it, and to
overwhelm it with numbers. On the sixth of February, the great armament
appeared in sight of Dauphin Island. On t