Very shortly after the _Macedonian's_ return home I was sent to New Orleans, for a ship on the Texas blockade; transportation being given me on one of the "beef-boats," as the supply-vessels were familiarly known. Among fellow-passengers was one of my class; for a while, indeed, my room-mate at the Academy. When we reached New Orleans the chief of staff said to me, "There is a vacancy on board the _Monongahela_," a ship larger and in every way better than the _Seminole_ to which I was ordered; moreover, she was lying off Mobile, a sociable blockade, instead of at a jumping-off place, the end of nowhere, Sabine Pass, where the _Seminole_ was. He advised me to apply for her, which I did; but Commodore Bell, acting in Farragut's absence in the North, declined. I must go to the ship to which the Department had assigned me, and for which it doubtless had its reasons. So my classmate was ordered to her instead, and on board her was killed in the passage of the Mobile forts the following August. I can scarcely claim a miraculous escape, as it does not appear that I should have got in the way of the ball which finished him; but for him, poor fellow, who had not been long married, the commodore's refusal to me was a sentence of death. I shall not attempt to furbish up any intellectual entertainment for readers from the excessively dry bones of my subsequent blockading, especially off the mouth of the Sabine. Only a French cook could produce a passable dish out of such woful material; and even he would require concomitant ingredients, in remembered incidents, wherein, if there were any, my memory fails me. Day after day, day after day, we lay inactive--roll, roll; not wholly ineffective, I suppose, for our presence stopped blockade-running; but even in this respect the Texas coast had largely lost importance since the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the previous summer, had cut off the trans-Mississippi region from the body of the Confederacy. We used to see the big, light-draught steamers coming up the river, or crossing the lagoon-like bay, sometimes crowded with people; and the possibility was discussed of their carrying troops, and of their coming out to attack us, as not long before had been successfully done against our vessels _inside_ Galveston Bay. In a norther, possibly, such a thing might have been tried, for the sea was then smooth; but in the ordinary ground-swell I imagine the soldiers would have been incapacitated by sea-sickness. The chances were all against success, and no attempt was ever made; but it was something to talk about.