The ruined town of St. Mary's had at that time a bad reputation, among both naval and military men. Lying but a short distance above Fernandina, on the Georgia side, it was occasionally visited by our gunboats. I was informed that the only residents of the town were three old women, who were apparently kept there as spies,--that, on our approach, the aged crones would come out and wave white handkerchiefs,--that they would receive us hospitably, profess to be profoundly loyal, and exhibit a portrait of Washington,--that they would solemnly assure us that no Rebel pickets had been there for many weeks,--but that in the adjoining yard we should find fresh horse-tracks, and that we should be fired upon by guerrillas the moment we left the wharf. My officers had been much excited by these tales; and I had assured them, that, if this programme were literally carried out, we would straightway return and burn the town, or what was left of it, for our share. It was essential to show my officers and men, that, while rigid against irregular outrage, we could still be inexorable against the enemy. We had previously planned to stop at this town, on our way down river, for some valuable lumber which we had espied on a wharf; and gliding down the swift current, shelling a few bluffs as we passed, we soon reached it. Punctual as the figures in a panorama, appeared the old ladies with their white handkerchiefs. Taking possession of the town, much of which had previously been destroyed by the gunboats, and stationing the color-guard, to their infinite delight, in the cupola of the most conspicuous house, I deployed skirmishers along the exposed suburb, and set a detail of men at work on the lumber. After a stately and decorous interview with the queens of society at St. Mary's,--is it Scott who says that nothing improves the manners like piracy?--I peacefully withdrew the men when the work was done. There were faces of disappointment among the officers,--for all felt a spirit of mischief, after the last night's adventure,--when, just as we had fairly swung out into the stream and were under way, there came, like the sudden burst of a tropical tornado, a regular little hailstorm of bullets into the open end of the boat, driving every gunner in an instant from his post, and surprising even those who were looking to be surprised. The shock was but for a second; and though the bullets had pattered precisely like the sound of hail upon the iron cannon, yet nobody was hurt. With very respectable promptness, order was restored, our own shells were flying into the woods from which the attack proceeded, and we were steaming up to the wharf again, according to promise.