r. He had brought ashore his wife,
her sister, and their chests, with the mail, and had orders to
return immediately to the steamer (Gaston or Harney) to bring ashore
some soldiers belonging to another company, E (Braggs), which had
been ordered from St. Augustine to Fort Pierce. Ashlock left his
wife and her sister standing on the beach near the pilot-hut, and
started back with his whale-boat across the bar. I also took the
mail and started up to the fort, and had hardly reached the wharf
when I observed another boat following me. As soon as this reached
the wharf the men reported that Ashlock and all his crew, with the
exception of one man, had been drowned a few minutes after I had
left the beach. They said his surf-boat had reached the steamer, had
taken on board a load of soldiers, some eight or ten, and had
started back through the surf, when on the bar a heavy breaker upset
the boat, and all were lost except the boy who pulled the bow-oar,
who clung to the rope or painter, hauled himself to the upset boat,
held on, drifted with it outside the breakers, and was finally
beached near a mile down the coast. They reported also that the
steamer had got up anchor, run in as close to the bar as she could,
paused awhile, and then had started down the coast.

I instantly took a fresh crew of soldiers and returned to the bar;
there sat poor Mrs. Ashlock on her chest of clothes, a weeping
widow, who had seen her husband perish amid sharks and waves; she
clung to the hope that the steamer had picked him up, but, strange
to say, he could not swim, although he had been employed on the
water all his life.

Her sister was more demonstrative, and wailed as one lost to all
hope and life. She appealed to us all to do miracles to save the
struggling men in the waves, though two hours had already passed,
and to have gone out then among those heavy breakers, with an
inexperienced crew, would have been worse than suicide. All I
could do was to reorganize the guard at the beach, take the two
desolate females up to the fort, and give them the use of my own
quarters. Very soon their anguish was quieted, and they began to
look, for the return of their steamer with Ashlock and his rescued
crew. The next day I went again to the beach with Lieutenant Ord,
and we found that one or two bodies had been washed ashore, torn
all to pieces by the sharks, which literally swarmed the inlet at
every new tide. In a few days the weather moderat