-WE RETREAT, AND REGAIN OUR
SHIP.

With a proud confidence that we were sailing on to victory, and as all
hoped and believed to bring the war to a conclusion, the squadron
entered the Chesapeake on the evening of the 30th of December.

The Charon, however, did not make a good beginning. The lead was kept
going, and with a fair and light breeze we were running quietly on.
Suddenly, just as eight bells had struck, there was a shock felt--not a
very violent one, happily--but the cause we knew too well; the ship was
on shore on the Willoughby Shoal. The canvas was furled, and an attempt
instantly made to get her off; but there did not then appear much chance
of our efforts proving successful. We had been toiling away for two or
three hours, and still the ship stuck fast.

"I don't like this here event by no means at all, Tom," I heard Nol
Grampus observe to Tom Rockets.

Nol, though a sensible fellow in the main, was a thorough old salt, and
with all the usual prejudices of his class.

"To my mind ill-luck has set in against us. I had a dream t'other
night. I thought as how, while we was a-standing on under all sail,
thinking ourselves all right and free from danger, far away from land, I
saw a big fish--she was a whopper, depend on that--a-swimming along over
the sea. I looked at her, and she opened her mouth and made right at
the ship. Her upper jaw reached far up above the main-top mast truck,
and the lower one, I'd no doubt, dipped far away down below her keel.
Well, as I was a-saying, on she came, roaring away like a young
porpoise, and heaving the foam right over our mast-heads. I knew what
would happen, and so it did. Just as easily as the big shark in Port
Royal harbour would swallow a nigger boy, she made a snap at the ship
and bolted us all, masts and spars and hull, and I felt as how we was
all a-being crunched up in her jaws. I woke with a start, which made me
almost jump clean out of my hammock, all over in a cold sweat, and right
glad I was to find that it wasn't true; but, d'ye see, Tom, as to going
to sleep again, I couldn't for the life of me, but lay awake a-kicking
up my toes and turning the matter over in my mind. Says I to myself,
`There's some harm a-coming to the old barkie of some sort or other, or
my name's not Nol Grampus. When we gets ashore this evening,' says I to
myself, `this is the beginning on it,' and you'll see my words comes
true, Tom."

There was not light enough to al