Having made it out, in fact steaming close up to it, we shaped our course for Fort Pulaski, using the light as a point of departure, the distance by the chart being twelve miles.
We soon saw its outlines looming through the darkness ahead, and formidable though it looked, it caused me no anxiety, compared with the danger we seemed to be in from the shoalwater and breakers being all around us.

However, the pilot who had charge of such matters seemed comfortable enough.
So we went cautiously along, and in ten minutes would have been past danger, at all events from the batteries on the fort, when one of the severest storms I ever remember of wind and rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, came on, and enveloped us in a most impenetrable darkness.

Knowing that we were surrounded by most dangerous shoals, and being then in only fifteen feet water, I felt our position to be a very perilous one.

The pilot had by this time pretty well lost his head; in fact, it would have puzzled anyone to say where we were.

So we turned round and steered out to sea again, by the same way we had come in; and when we were as near as we could guess twenty miles from land, we let go our anchor in fifteen fathoms water.
Then came on a heavy gale of wind accompanied by a thick fog, which lasted three days and nights.