At nine in the morning, we gave three cheers, and leaving the corvette,
with barely forty hands on board, the Gleam made sail towards the
harbour's mouth, with the boats in tow; but when we got within musket
shot of the entrance, the breeze failed us, when the order of sailing
was reversed, the boats now taking the schooner in tow, preceded by your
humble servant in the gig. We dashed safely through the small canal of
blue water, which divided the surf at the harbour's mouth, having hit it
to a nicety; but when about a pistolshot from the entrance, the channel
narrowed to a muddy creek, not more than twenty yards wide, with high
trees, and thick underwood close to the water's edge. All was silent,
the sun shone clown upon us like the concentrated rays of a burning
glass, and there was no breeze to dissipate the heavy dank mist that
hovered over the surface of the unwholesome canal, nor was there any
appearance of a living thing, save and except a few startled waterfowl,
and some guanoes on the trees, and now and then an alligator, like a
black log of charred wood, would roll off a slimy bank of brown mud,
with a splash into the water.
We rowed on, the schooner every now and then taking the ground, but she
was always quickly warped off again by a kedge; at length, after we had
in all proceeded, it might be, about a mile from the beach, we came to a
boom of strong timber clamped with iron, stretching across the creek.
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