On _this_ eighth day of December, 1861, however, the record is very different, it being as follows: "At ten A. M. descried a sail from the deck, startlingly close to; so thick has been the weather. The stranger being a bark, taunt-rigged, with sky-sail poles, and under top-sails, we mistook him at first for a cruiser, and raised our smoke-stack, and started the fires in the furnaces. Having done this, we approached him somewhat cautiously, keeping the weather-gauge of him, and showed him the United States colors. He soon hoisted the same. Getting a nearer view of him, we now discovered him to be a whaler. The engineer at once discontinued his "firing up," and the smoke-stack was again lowered, to its accustomed place. Upon being boarded, the bark proved to be the _Eben. Dodge_, twelve days out, from New Bedford, and bound on a whaling voyage to the Pacific Ocean. She had experienced a heavy gale, had sprung some of her spars, and was leaking badly--hence the easy sail she had been under. Although the sea was still very rough, and the weather lowering, we got on board from the prize, some water, and provisions, clothing, and small stores. The supply of pea-jackets, whalers' boots, and flannel over-shirts, which our paymaster had been unable to procure in the West Indies, was particularly acceptable to us, battling, as we now were, with the gales of the North Atlantic, in the month of December. We brought away from her, also, two of her fine whale-boats, so valuable in rough weather; making room for them on deck, by the side of the _Sumter's_ launch. The crew of the _Dodge_, consisting of twenty-two persons, made a considerable addition to our small community. We fired the prize at half-past six, P. M., as the shades of evening were closing in, and made sail on our course. The flames burned red and lurid in the murky atmosphere, like some Jack-o'-lantern; now appearing, and now disappearing, as the doomed ship rose upon the top, or descended into the abyss of the waves. Having now forty-three prisoners on board, and there never being, at one time, so many of the _Sumter's_ crew on watch, it became necessary for me to think of precautions. It would be easy for forty-three courageous men, to rise upon a smaller number, sleeping carelessly about the decks, and wrest from them the command of the ship. Hitherto I had given the prisoners the run of the ship, putting no more restrictions upon them, than upon my own men, but this could no longer be. I therefore directed my first lieutenant to put one-half of the prisoners in single irons--that is, with manacles on the wrists only--alternately, for twenty-four hours at a time. The prisoners, themselves, seeing the necessity of this precaution, submitted cheerfully to the restraint--for as such only they viewed it--and not as an indignity.