Reaching the wharf, one company, under Lieutenant (now Captain) Danil-son, was promptly deployed in search of our assailants, who soon grew silent.

Not so the old ladies, when I announced to them my purpose, and added, with extreme regret, that, as the wind was high, I should burn only that half of the town which lay to leeward of their house, which did not, after all, amount to much.

Between gratitude for this degree of mercy, and imploring appeals for greater, the treacherous old ladies manoeuvred with clasped hands and demonstrative handkerchiefs around me, impairing the effect of their eloquence by constantly addressing me as "Mr.
Captain"; for I have observed, that, while the sternest officer is greatly propitiated by attributing to him a rank a little higher than his own, yet no one is ever mollified by an error in the opposite direction.

I tried, however, to disregard such low considerations, and to strike the correct mean between the sublime patriot and the unsanctified incendiary, while I could find no refuge from weak contrition save in greater and greater depths of courtesy; and so melodramatic became our interview that some of the soldiers still maintain that "dem dar ole Secesh women been a-gwine for kiss de Cunnel," before we ended.

But of this monstrous accusation I wish to register an explicit denial, once for all.
Dropping down to Fernandina unmolested after this affair, we were kindly received by the military and naval commanders,--Colonel Hawley, of the Seventh Connecticut (now Brigadier-General Hawley), and Lieutenant-Commander Hughes, of the gunboat Mohawk.