The ship also, on that voyage, encountered distinctive annoyances and dangers. For weeks after they sailed they were in constant dread of Confederate privateers. Once they were so sure that they were about to be captured by a ship which they mistook for one of these destroyers of American commerce that they hastily prepared as well as they could for such a catastrophe. When they sailed from New York, the battle of Gettysburg was in progress and still undecided; and it was not until October 15 when they were overtaken by a vessel which had sailed eleven days after them from New York, that their anxiety as to the result was relieved, and their hearts were thrilled with exultation, by the news that Meade was victorious, and also that Vicksburg had fallen. Out among the islands to the northeast of Australia the ship was caught in a current, and was forced so rapidly and nearly on the wild, rocky shores of an uncivilized island that the captain himself despaired of escaping wreck. Providentially a breeze from the land sprang up and carried them out of danger. They were overtaken by no severe storms. Several times their patience was sorely tested by protracted calms; in the Pacific it once took them seventeen days to make three hundred and forty miles. All of these things lay beyond the control of the officers and crew, and the missionaries accepted them as trials to which they ought quietly and patiently to submit. But imagine as added to this a half year’s subjection to the arbitrary and autocratic rule of a captain who was ignorant except as to seamanship; who was coarse and constantly profane in speech; who was tyrannical and brutal so far as he dared to be, and yet when boldly faced by those who were able to bring him to account for his conduct was a contemptible coward; who skimped the people on board of food adequate in quantity or decently fit in quality, partly because of stingy greed, and partly from a desire thus to gratify his malignant disposition; who hated missionaries and seemed to have a special pleasure in making their lives on his ship as uncomfortable as possible; who barely tolerated such religious observances as the asking of a blessing at meals, or a service for social worship on the Sabbath in the cabin, and who forbade all attempts to do any religious work, even by conversation, among the crew; who was capable of descending to various petty meannesses in order to gratify his base inclinations; and who somehow yet managed to secure from officers under him a measure of sympathy and coöperation in his conduct. When we have as fully as possible grasped these things, we can understand why Dr. Mateer, half a lifetime afterward, wrote to his college classmates that if in order to reach America it had been necessary to repeat the experience of that outward voyage, it is doubtful if ever again he had seen his native land.