CHAPTER XI.
"_The poor old Sumter"-- The vessel laid up--What the Sumter did--Official report--A narrow escape--Movements of Captain Semmes--Useful missions--Appointment to the Alabama_.
Meanwhile the search for coal had been continued by the Sumter and at length a promise of a supply had been obtained.

It so happened, however, that this supply, so long sought and so hardly won, would after all never be required.
The little Sumter's days as a cruiser were numbered.

By no means a new boat when first converted by Captain Semmes into a vessel of war, the hard work and rough usage she had experienced in her seven months at sea, had been too much for her already enfeebled constitution, and she was now little better than a wreck.

At last she fairly broke down altogether, was surveyed by a board of her officers, pronounced unseaworthy, and on the 24th of February Captain Semmes makes the following entry in his journal:-- "And so the poor old Sumter is to be laid up.

Well! we have done the country some service, having cost the United States at least a million of dollars, one way or another!" And so she unquestionably bad.