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[258] me, by force, if necessary, against an actual assault, by the Iroquois, he had not the moral courage to risk the ire of his master, by offending the Great Republic, on a point about which there could be any question.

The Iroquois was very much in earnest in endeavoring to capture me, and Captain Palmer spent many sleepless nights, and labored very zealously to accomplish his object; notwithstanding which, when my escape became known to his countrymen, he had all Yankeeland down on him. It was charged, among other things, by one indignant Yankee captain, that Palmer and myself had been school-mates, and that treachery had done the work. I must do my late opponent the justice to say, that he did all that vigilance and skill could do, and a great deal more, than the laws of war authorized him to do. He made a free use of the neutral territory, and of his own merchant-ships that were within its waters. He had left St. Thomas in a great hurry, upon getting news of the Sumter, without waiting to coal. In a day or two after his arrival at St. Pierre, he chartered a Yankee schooner, and sent her to St. Thomas, for a supply of coal; and taking virtual possession of another—a small lumber schooner, from Maine, that lay discharging her cargo, a short distance from the Sumter—he used her as a signal, and look-out ship. Sending his pilot on shore, he arranged with the Yankee master—one of your long, lean, slab-sided fellows, that looked like the planks he handled—a set of signals, by which the Sumter was to be circumvented.

The anchorage of St. Pierre is a wide, open bay, with an exit around half the points of the compass. The Iroquois, as she kept watch and ward over the Sumter, generally lay off the centre of this sheet of water. As the Sumter might run out either north of her, or south of her, it was highly important that the Iroquois should know, as promptly as possible, which of the passages the little craft intended to take. To this end, the signals were arranged. Certain lights were to be exhibited, in certain positions, on board the Yankee schooner, to indicate to her consort, that the Sumter was under way, and the course she was running. I knew nothing, positively, of this arrangement. I only knew that the pilot

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James S. Palmer (2)
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