Show I RUNNING THE BLOCKADE Chicago Record The most famous of all the blockade runners England sent to give aid and comfort to the seceded states durIng the war of the rebellion was thai British naval officer of-ficer who afterward came to be known as Hobart Pasha But almost a widely wide-ly known and certainly the most distinguished dis-tinguished of all the civilians engaged in he unlawful traffic was Thomas E Taylor better known a Tom His experiences have been embodied in book form recently and are as interestingly inter-estingly exciting a Tom Sawyers Black Avenger of the Spanish lan The excitement was of several kinds any one of them being sufficient to make the heart beat a little more lively live-ly than most kinds of excitement In the first place the procedure was without with-out sanction of law Imprisonment without right of appeal was certain to follow capture and war prisons even In the north ware far from alluring The cargo often exceeding 300000 In value was certain of confiscation and as a part of i there was usually a private venture not belonging to tae employing firm The steamer worth many thousands of dollars would of course share the fate of the cargo The blockading fleet was numerous at the time Taylor entered upon his work and a the Americans have always been l notably accurate in their sea firIng fir-Ing and were eager to put a step to the supplies which eery successful running brought to the enemy and to take them the lves as prizes there was always the chance of losing I yuui own lit or tue Jies 01 sore oi your fellows Mr Taylor is a good story teller and his accounts of his first and last trips are fascinating On the first of his voyages made in the Banshee he tells of finding himself in the middle of the Yankee fleet thus As we crept In not a sound was heard but that of the regular bat of the paddleboats still dangerously loud in spite of our snails pace Suddenly Sud-denly Burroughs the engineer gripped my arm Theres one of them Mr Taylor le whispered on the starboard bow In vain I strained my eyes to where i he pointed not a thing could I see but presently I heard Steele the skipper II skip-per say beneath his breath All right Burroughs I see her And Starboard a little steady was the order passed aft j A moment later I could make out along a-long low black object on our starboard star-board side lying 1 perfectly Mill Would she see us That was the question but no though we passed within 100 yards of her we were not discovered and I breathed again Not vet long after whispered we had dropped her Burroughs I Steamer on the port bow And another cruiser was made out I close to us Hard aport said Steele and round she swung bringing our friend upon our beam Still unobserved we I crept quietly on when all at once a third cruiser shaped herself out of the gloom right ahead and steaming slowly acrcss our bows Stop her said Steele in a moment and as we lav like dead our enemy went on and disappeared in the darkness dark-ness I was clear there was a false reckoning somewhere but they suc esfully evaded their wouldbe captors and were safe under the guns of Fort Fisher by the time the sun was up After Wilmington had fallen Into federal hands Mr Taylor transferred his activities which had been given cope between the North Carolina city I 1 + h l h I route between Galveston U and Havana They found themselves in a norther itt el eur off the former port In full sight of their I adversaries aidunable to get into the main channel So Mr Taylor wrieswe had to make for a sort of swash channel along the beach which however was nothing hut a culdesac and to get from it into the main channel shoal water and I heavy beaker had to be passed Bftt there was now no other choice open to us z By this time the fleet had opened fire uron us and shells were bursting merrily around as we took the fire of each ship which we parsed Fortunately Fortunate-ly there was a narrow shoal between us which kept them from coming nearer than half a mile lucky also for us they were In rough water on the windward side of the shoal and could not lay their guns with precision And to this we owed our escape as although our funnels fun-nels were ridded with shell splinters we received no damage and had only one man wounded But the worst was yet to come we saw the white water already ahead and we knew our only chance was to bump through I being well aware that If she stuck fast we should lose the shin and all our lives for no boat even If it could have been launched would have lived in such a i surf I A moment after we touched and hung and I thought i was all over I when a big wave came rolling along and lifted our stern and the ship bodily with a crack which could be heard a j quarter of a mile off and which we I thought meant that her back was broken i I She once more went ahead the worst was over and after two or three minor bumps we were in the deep I channel The wharves were crowded with people who gazing to seaward had watched our exploit with much j interest and who cheered us heartily 1 f upon its success i I Tom Taylor found himself a partner part-ner hi the firs of Liverpool merchants where he had been a clerk at the close of the war and is enjoying the fortune whose foundations were laid in the I blood of both sides |