Before leaving Bermuda I had ordered a cargo of munitions of war sent to Turk’s Island. We had to wait nearly a month for this shipment to arrive but the time was well spent in overhauling the engines and putting the “Letter B” in perfect condition. My second trip to Charleston furnished a degree of excitement that exalted my soul. While we were held up at Turk’s Island the blockading fleet had been strengthened and supplemented by several small and fast boats which cruised around outside of the line. Without knowing this I had decided--it must have been in response to a “hunch”--to make a dash straight through the line and into the harbor. It was fortunate that we followed this plan for they were expecting us to come up from the south, hugging the shore as we had done before, and if we had taken that course they certainly would have sunk us or forced us aground. We were proceeding cautiously but did not think we were close to the danger zone when suddenly one of the patrol ships picked us up and opened fire. Her guns were no better than peashooters but they gave the signal to the fleet and instantly lights popped up all along the line ahead of us. When caught in such a trap, if I had not been thirsting for thrills, I would have shown them our heels, for we could have gotten away without any trouble; but the demon of dare-deviltry seized and gripped me. In the flashing lights ahead I saw all of the excitement I had been longing for, and with an exultant yell to the helmsman to “tell the engineer to give her hell,” I pushed him aside and seized the wheel. I fondled the spokes lovingly and leaned over them in a tumult of joy. It was the great moment of which I had dreamed from boyhood. I had anticipated that when it came I would be considerably excited and forgetful of all my carefully thought out plans for meeting an emergency, but to my surprise I found that I was as cool as though we were riding at anchor in New York Bay. In the first flash I felt myself grow cold all over and then a gentle current of electricity began running through me, as though my heart had been transformed into a dynamo and my veins into fine wires. The opening gun cleared my mind of all its anxieties and intensified its action. I remember that I took time to analyze my feelings to make sure that I was calm and collected and not stunned and stolid, and that I was silent from choice and not through anything of fear. I counted the blockading ships as their hidden lights flashed out and wondered how their officers and crews enjoyed being dragged out of their first sound sleep by my impertinent little vessel. I measured the distance we would have to go to clear their line and tried to figure out, from a rough calculation as to the number of their guns and the accuracy of their fire, the mathematical probability of our being sunk. Strange though it may seem, the possibility of our capture never occurred to me. We might be sent to