Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[640] winter had not been known for years before. The temperature was delightful. Although we were in the latitude of about 34°—say the equivalent latitude to that of south-western Virginia—we did not feel the want of fires. Indeed, the grasses were green, and vegetation seemed to have been scarcely suspended. The graziers had no need to feed their cattle.

A schooner came in while we lay here, bringing us some letters from merchants at Cape Town, welcoming us to the colony, and offering to supply us with coal, or whatever else we might need. I had left orders both at Fernando de Noronha, and Bahia, for the Agrippina, if she should arrive at either of those places, after my departure, to make the best of her way to Saldanha Bay, and await me there. She should have preceded me several weeks. She was not here—the old Scotchman, as before remarked, having played me false.

When Kell had put his ship in order, he took a little recreation himself, and in company with one or two of his messmates went off into the interior, on an ostrich hunt. Horses and dogs, and hunters awaited them, at the country-seat of the gentleman who had invited them to partake of this peculiarly African sport. They had a grand hunt, and put up several fine birds, at which some of the party—Kell among the number, got shots—but they did not bring any ‘plumes’ on board; at least of their own capturing. The devilish birds, as big as horses, and running twice as fast, as some of the young officers described them, refused to ‘heave to,’ they said, though they had sent sundry whistlers around their heads, in the shape of buck-shot.

A sad accident occurred to one of our young hunters before we left the bay. One afternoon, just at sunset, I was shocked to receive the intelligence that one of the cutters had returned alongside, with a dead officer in it. Third Assistant Engineer Cummings was the unfortunate officer. He had been hunting with a party of his messmates. They had all returned with well-filled game-bags to the boat, at sunset, and Cummings was in the act of stepping into her, when the cock of his gun striking against the gunwale, a whole load of buck-shot passed through his chest in the region of the heart, and he fell dead, in an instant, upon the sands. The body was lifted tenderly