her our point of departure for the entrance
of the river. But we went on and on, and we could not see the glimmer of
a light or even anything of a vessel (we found out afterwards that the
light-ship had been blown from her moorings in the gale). This was a
nice mess. The pilot told us that to attempt to run for the entrance
without having the bearings of the light to guide us would have been
perfect madness. We had barely enough coals to take us back to Nassau,
and if we had remained dodging about, waiting for the light-vessel to be
replaced, we should have been worse off for fuel, of which we had so
little that if we had been chased on our way back we should certainly
have been captured.

So we started for Nassau, keeping well in shore on the Georgia and
Florida coast. Along this coast there were many small creeks and rivers
where blockade-running in small crafts, and even boats, was constantly
carried on, and where the Northerners had stationed several brigs and
schooners of war, who did the best they could to stop the traffic. Many
an open boat has run over from the northernmost island of the Bahamas
group, a distance of fifty miles, and returned with one or two bales of
cotton, by which her crew were well remunerated.

We had little to fear from sailing men-of-war, as the weather was calm
and fine, so we steamed a few miles from the shore, all day passing
several of them, just out of range of their guns. One vessel tried the
effect of a long shot, but we could afford to laugh at her.

The last night we spent at sea was rather nervous work. We had reduced
our coals to about three-quarters of a ton, and had to cross the Gulf
Stream at the narrow part between the Florida coast and the Bahamas, a
distance of twenty-eight miles, where the force of the current is four
knots an hour. Our coals were soon finished. We cut up the available
spars, oars, &c., burnt a hemp cable (that by the way made a capital
blaze), and just managed to fetch across to the extreme western end of
the group of islands belonging to Great Britain, where we anchored.

We couldn't have steamed three miles further. On the wild spot where we
anchored there was fortunately a small heap of anthracite coal, that
probably had been part of the cargo of some wreck, of which we took as
much as would carry us to Nassau, and arrived there safely. Thus the
attempt to get into Savannah was a failure. It was tried once afterwards
by a steamer which managed to