Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/167

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Crew of Dictator ship with us
123

when this was granted, would request to be allowed to ship aboard. To our surprise the second and third mate and the twenty-seven seamen joined us and afterward proved to be among the very best men we had.

The captain of the Dictator had shared Captain Maury's cabin and seemed a very nice man, but the first mate was of a very different type. He was quartered in my state-room, while I had to sleep in a hammock slung out in the steerage. He took his meals with me and was allowed to take his exercise on the poop deck. Of course neither he nor the captain was subjected to the inconvenience of having irons put on them; but Mr. Snow, the first mate, repaid our consideration by writing the story of his capture and "inhuman" treatment by the "pirates" on board the Georgia. He placed this romance in a bottle which he corked tightly and sealed with sealing-wax which he borrowed from me; then he threw it out of the air-port in hope that it would drift ashore. It did. Years after the war was over it was picked up on the coast of Norway, and its lying contents were published to the world.