It commenced snowing, and on the whole was a very disagreeable day. This after noon or evening I started to go on board the Cossack, I went with Lt Blair, Brown & Conolly seamen, & a half dozen others. It rained and grew dark on us before our weary tramp of five or six miles through the sand ended at the Pig point battery. As the cook pointed out where our boat lay, visions of hot coffee and warm biscuit rose before me - decent coffee we had not since we left the Cossack - & that was nothing like Dick can make. Our vexation can be imagined faintly when we found the boat gone - we were five miles from our camp and it would take two hours to make it - it was snowing. We made various attempts to get over - we started to get quarters. Our clothes were wet we had no blankets - We found a little house whose whole front had been knocked out with a shell - built a fire with about a half cord of wood at a time and got just inside the house. Oh, but it was miserable It was the longest night I had yet spent, of all the miserable nights I had spent since I left the Cossack. About eleven o’clock we were roused with the news brought there, to the headquarters, we were not aware they were in a shanty close by that the gunboats had run past the fortification at Elizabeth City, slap against the gunboats boarded them set fire to & burned five, the Jamy among the number, captured one, then turned their attention the fort, landed, spiked the guns, blew up the fortifications. The rebels set fire to the City, blew up the locks. The mayor of the City came off and surrendered to Capt Rowan, and requested him to assist in putting out the fire. Rowan said that he could not consent to land & if they saw fit to fire the City he could not help it - that he could not lie under the imputation of having fired it.
