In this case discretion was the better part of valor, and Captain Maffitt gave the order in a voice loud enough to be heard by foe as well as friend. Assured that the Confederate captain was complying with orders, the enemy did not suspect that the order that had been so plainly heard was merely a ruse and that the engineer had received whispered instructions, "Full speed ahead, sir, and open your throttle valve." The movements of the paddle deceived the Federals into the belief that the Confederate was really backing, but just as the advantage was with the blockade runner and her clever scheme was detected, fire was opened upon her with relentless fury. Drummond lights were burned, doubtless to aid the artilleryists, but so radiated the mist as to raise the hull above the line of vision, and the destructive missiles were poured into the sparse rigging and the hull was spared injury. Thus the blockade runner escaped from the foe and delivered 900 barrels of gunpowder to the Confederates at Wilmington, and this ammunition was used afterwards by General Johnston at the battle of Shiloh. A Human Derelict. The story of disasters on Cape Fear during the Federal blockade, 1861-1865, would be incomplete without reference to a human tragedy, the drowning of an accomplished Southern woman, Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow. Mrs. Greenhow was a prominent figure in Washington society during the Buchanan administration. She had become a resident of Washington in her girlhood, and had grown to womanhood under the influences which are thrown around the society element in the Nation's Capital. She was rich, beautiful, and attractive, possessing a ready wit and a charming and forceful personality. She was a close personal friend of President Buchanan and a friend of William H. Seward. With such friends her social position was of the highest, and she entertained many of the most prominent men in the country in her hospitable home. When the War between the States began she was entertaining Col. Thomas Jordan, later Adjutant General of the Confederate Army. Knowing well Mrs. Greenhow's strong sympathy for the land of her birth, Colonel Jordan determined to secure her services for the newborn Confederacy, and proposed to her that she become a secret agent for his government. Her social position, her wide acquaintance, her personal magnetism made her pre-eminently the one to extract information of military value for the Southern cause. Mrs. Greenhow consented to perform this perilous service for the land she loved, and started at once to get possession of facts which would be useful in the coming campaign.