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Marcy the Blockade Runner

by Harry Castlemon · English · Gutenberg #29387 · 461,753 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Marcy the Blockade Runner

Author: Harry Castlemon


        
Release date: July 12, 2009 [eBook #29387]
                Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29387

Credits: Produced by Gary Sandino, from scans generously provided by the Internet Archive


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARCY THE BLOCKADE RUNNER ***




Produced by Gary Sandino, from scans generously provided
by the Internet Archive.





                [Frontispiece: MARCY AND THE OVERSEER.]

                        CASTLEMON'S WAR SERIES.



                                MARCY



                                 THE



                           BLOCKADE-RUNNER

                                 BY

                          HARRY CASTLEMON,

         AUTHOR OF "GUNBOAT SERIES," "ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES,"

                "SPORTSMAN'S CLUB SERIES," ETC., ETC.

                 Four Illustrations by Geo. G. White.



                            PHILADELPHIA:

                           PORTER & COATES.



                           Copyright, 1891,

                                  BY

                           PORTER & COATES.



                              CONTENTS.



       CHAPTER                       PAGE

    I. MARCY HAS A VISITOR,             1

   II. HIDING THE FLAGS,               26

  III. BEARDSLEY BETRAYS HIMSELF,      52

   IV. TWO NARROW ESCAPES,             77

    V. A CAT WITHOUT CLAWS,           105

   VI. RUNNING THE BLOCKADE,          125

  VII. THE mate's LUCKY SHOT,         150

 VIII. A NOISE AT THE WINDOW,         174

   IX. THE "_SUMTER_" LOSES A PRIZE,  197

    X. A COOL PROPOSITION,            219

   XI. THE BANNER ON THE WALL,        241

  XII. CONFLICTING REPORTS,           268

 XIII. UNION OR CONFEDERATE--WHICH?   292

  XIV. JULIUS IN TROUBLE,             317

   XV. THE ENCHANTED LOOKING-GLASS,   339

  XVI. OFF FOR THE FLEET,             362

 XVII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING,         381

XVIII. CONCLUSION,                    403





                      MARCY, THE BLOCKADE-RUNNER,



                              CHAPTER I.

                          MARCY HAS A VISITOR.

The boys who have read the first volume of this series of books, in
which we followed the fortunes of our Union hero, Marcy Gray, and
described the persevering but unsuccessful efforts he made to be true to
his colors in deed as well as in spirit, will remember that we left him
at his home near Nashville, North Carolina, enjoying a brief respite
from the work he so heartily detested, that of privateering. He had made
one voyage in the _Osprey_ under Captain Beardsley, during which he
assisted in capturing the schooner _Mary Hollins_, bound from Havana to
Boston with an assorted cargo. When the prize was brought into the port
of Newbern the whole town went wild with excitement, Captain Beardsley's
agent being so highly elated that he urged the master of the _Osprey_ to
run out at once and try his luck again, before the capture of the
_Hollins_ became known at the North. But Beardsley, who was afraid to
trust landsharks any farther than he could see them, declared with a
good deal of earnestness that he would not budge an inch until the
legality of the capture had been settled by the courts, the vessel and
cargo sold, and the dollars that belonged to him and his crew were
planked down in their two hands. Knowing that it would take time to go
through all these formalities, Marcy Gray asked for a leave of absence,
which Beardsley granted according to promise, and in less than half an
hour after the _Osprey_ was hauled alongside the wharf, her disgusted
young pilot, wishing from the bottom of his heart that she might sink
out of sight before he ever saw her again, left her and went home as
fast as the cars could take him. When we last saw him he had reached his
mother's house, and was reading a letter from his cousin, _Rodney the
Partisan_ a portion of which we gave to the reader at the close of the
first volume of this series.

"Rodney is full of enthusiasm, isn't he?" exclaimed Marcy, when he had
finished reading the letter. "He says he looks for 'high old times'
running the Yankees out of Missouri, but I am afraid he'll not enjoy
them as much as he thinks he will. Perhaps the Yankees are not good
runners. But Rodney has been true to his colors and I have not. I said I
never would fight against the Union, but I have stood by and seen a gun
fired at the old flag; and I have no doubt that the skipper of the
_Hollins_ when he saw me aboard the privateer, took me for as good a
rebel as there was in the crew. Perhaps he will see his mistake some
day. I shall have to accept my share of the prize money, for if I don't
Beardsley's suspicions will be aroused; but I'll put it away and send it
to the master of the _Hollins_ the first good chance I get. Has Wat
Gifford been here since I went to sea? You know he warned me of two
secret enemies I would have to look out for, and hinted that he would
some day tell me who the rest are." ["But I think I know already," added
Marcy mentally.] While he was at sea he had had ample leisure to think
over the situation, and had made up his mind that he knew right where
the most serious danger that threatened him and his mother was coming
from.

"Walter has been here," replied Mrs. Gray, "and I understand that he has
since gone back to the army, his furlough, which was a short one, having
expired. I was glad to see Walter, for it was a very great relief to
visit with some one to whom I knew I could talk freely; but I must say
he left a very unpleasant impression on my mind. He told me, in so many
words, that we are suspected of being traitors at heart, and that there
are but few of our neighbors we can trust."

"And who are they?" inquired Marcy. "When we know who our friends are,
it will be no trouble for us to pick out our enemies."

"I asked Walter that very question, and after some hesitation he was
obliged to confess that he could not name a single person. There are
some who denounce secession in the very strongest terms, but that
doesn't prove anything, for Walter has often done the same thing
himself, and he is a rebel soldier," said Mrs. Gray sadly. "Only think
of it, Marcy! To not one of the many who were our warm friends in times
past, can we go for advice and sympathy, now that trouble is coming upon
us. Is it not dreadful?"

"Who cares for advice or sympathy?" exclaimed the boy wrathfully. "We've
got each other and Jack to go to when the pinch comes, and outsiders can
just mind their own business and live to themselves, and let us do the
same. Traitors! That word doesn't apply to us, mother."

"I know it doesn't; but for all that I am afraid that the 'outsiders,'
as you call them, will not let us live to ourselves. Young Gifford
almost as good as told me that some of our near neighbors intend to keep
themselves posted in regard to our movements."

"The--the impudence of the thing!" exclaimed the young pilot, pounding
his knees with his clenched hands. "Who's going to keep them posted?
Where do they expect to get their information? Through the overseer?"

"Through the overseer," whispered Mrs. Gray, in reply.

"Are you afraid to speak the words out loud?" cried Marcy, who had
seldom been so excited as he was at that moment. "Great Moses! Have
things come to such a pass that we dare not talk in our ordinary tones
in our own house, but must carry on our conversation in whispers?"

"I was in hopes that my letters would prepare you for something like
this," said his mother slowly.

"Well, they didn't. Of course I knew I should find things changed, but I
never thought we should be spied upon in our own house," answered Marcy.
"Traitors, are we, when we haven't done the first thing to deserve the
name! But is there no way in which that villain Hanson can be got rid
of?"

"There is but one way that occurs to me now," was the reply. "When his
contract expires we can tell him that we do not intend to employ an
overseer any longer."

"And that will be almost a year from now," groaned Marcy. "How can we
live for so many months, knowing all the while that our every movement
is watched, and that some one is constantly trying to catch every word
we say? I don't believe I can stand it. Did Gifford say anything
about----"

Marcy paused, got upon his feet, and opened quickly, but silently, one
after another, all the doors that led from the room in which he and his
mother were sitting. There were no eavesdroppers among the servants
_yet_ but that was no sign that there wouldn't be some to-morrow or next
day. An overseer who was left as much to himself as Hanson was, held
great power in his hands; and some negro servants are as open to bribery
as some white people are. Having made sure that there was no one
listening at the door, Marcy drew his chair close to his mother's side
before he spoke again.

"Did Gifford say anything about the money--the thirty thousand dollars
in gold you have hidden in the cellar wall?" he asked, in suppressed
tones.

"He did, and it troubles me more than anything else he said during his
visit," replied Mrs. Gray, glancing nervously around the room, as if she
feared that there might be a listener concealed behind some of the
chairs or under the sofa. "In spite of my utmost care, that matter,
which I hoped to keep from the knowledge of even the most faithful among
the servants, has become known. I cannot account for it. It fairly
unnerves me to think of it, for it suggests a most alarming
possibility."

"Did Gifford say, in so many words, that you were known to have money in
the house?"

"He did not. He said it was suspected."

"And what is the alarming possibility you just spoke of?" continued
Marcy.

"Why, I am afraid that there is some trusted person nearer to me than
the overseer is--some one right here in the house who has been watching
me day and night," answered his mother, shivering all over and drawing
nearer to her sturdy son, as if for protection. "You don't know how it
makes me feel, or how keenly I have suffered since young Gifford's
visit."

"I wish he had stopped away," said Marcy, almost fiercely.

"I don't," replied his mother. "He meant it for the best, and wouldn't
have told me a word if I had not insisted. You must not blame Walter. It
is best that I should understand the situation; and Marcy, you know you
would not have told me a word of all this if Gifford had told it to
you."

"Perhaps he did say something to me about it," answered the boy, with an
air which said that his mother had not been telling him anything he did
not know before. "But I have been more careful of your feelings than
Gifford was."

"And did you mean to leave me all in the dark and utterly ignorant of
the perils that surround us?" said Mrs. Gray reproachfully. "Do you
think that would have been just to me? Don't imagine, because you are my
protector and the only one I have to depend on while Jack is at sea,
that you have all the courage there is between us. I know you would
shield me entirely if you could, but it is impossible; and you must let
me bear my part. I shall have to whether you consent or not. But you
haven't yet told me where you have been, how you captured that vessel,
what the captain said about it, or--or anything," she added, with a
feeble attempt to bring the boy's usual smile back to his face.
"Remember, I am deeply interested in all that you do."

"Well, you wouldn't be if you had seen the cowardly work I helped
Beardsley carry out," replied Marcy. "In the first place, Crooked Inlet
is buoyed in such a way that the stranger who tries to go through it
will run his vessel so hard and fast aground that she will be likely to
stay there until the waves make an end of her, or the shifting sands of
the bar bury her out of sight."

"That's murderous," exclaimed Mrs. Gray, with a shudder. "Is Captain
Beardsley about to turn wrecker?"

"He means to wreck any war vessel that may give chase to his schooner,"
answered Marcy. "If we are pursued, I can take the _Osprey_ through all
right; but if the man-of-war attempts to follow us, and allows herself
to be guided by the buoys, she'll stick. Oh, it's lovely business--a
brave and honorable business," exclaimed the boy, running his hands
through his hair and tumbling it up as he used to do at school when he
found anything in his books that was too hard for him. "I have the
profoundest contempt for the villain who brought me into it, and despise
myself for yielding to him."

"But, Marcy, what else could you have done? Gilford assured me it was
the only course open to you, and that by shipping as pilot on board that
privateer you have somewhat allayed suspicion."

"Mother," said Marcy, placing his arm around her neck and whispering the
words in her ear, "Captain Beardsley doesn't need a pilot any more than
he needs some one to command his piratical craft. I suspected as much
all the while, and the minute we got up to Crooked Inlet I knew it. He
can tell you more about the coast in five minutes than I could in an
hour."

"Of course, a trader----" began Mrs. Gray.

"Mother," repeated Marcy, "Lon Beardsley is not and never has been a
trader. He's a smuggler between this country and Cuba. He says himself
that he never made a voyage farther away from home than the West Indies.
He knows every inch of the coast like a book."

"Then what does he want of you?" inquired Mrs. Gray, with a look of
surprise. "Why can he not permit you to stay at home in peace, as he
knows I want you to do? Do you still think he wants to test your loyalty
to the South?"

"That's just what he is up to," replied Marcy. "He came here in the hope
that I would refuse his offer, so that he would have an excuse for
getting me into trouble."

Yes, that was one object Captain Beardsley had in view when he proposed
to make Marcy Gray pilot of the privateer, but there was another behind
it, and one that was much nearer to the smuggler's heart. As Marcy had
told his friend Wat Gifford, on the day the two held that confidential
conversation in front of the Nashville post-office, Beardsley wanted to
marry Mrs. Gray's plantation; and when he found that he must give up all
hope in that direction, like the poor apology for a man that he was, he
hit upon a plan for taking vengeance upon Marcy's mother. If she proved,
when the test was applied, to be friendly to the South and its cause, he
would not dare lift a finger against her or her property, for he knew
that if he did his neighbors would quickly interest themselves in the
matter; but if she would only refuse to permit Marcy to ship on board
the privateer, then he would have a clear field for his operations. He
could accuse Marcy's mother of being a Yankee sympathizer, and that
would turn the whole settlement against her at once, because she was
already suspected of Union sentiments, and some of her nearest neighbors
were so certain that she was loyal to the old flag and opposed to
secession, that they thought it their duty to cease visiting her. It
would be no trouble at all, Beardsley thought, to arouse public feeling
against her; but unfortunately for the success of his plans, Mrs. Gray
did not refuse her consent; the boy took the position offered him on the
_Osprey_ made one voyage at sea, and did his duty as faithfully as any
other member of the crew.

"I know Beardsley wanted to find out where I stood," repeated Marcy. "He
expected and hoped that I would refuse to accept his proposition so that
he would have an excuse for persecuting us; but being disappointed
there, he intends to work in another direction. He means to make trouble
on account of the money you have in the cellar."

"But what business--what right has he with it?" said Mrs. Gray
indignantly. "It's ours."

"I know it, and we're going to keep it; but if Beardsley can make sure
that you went to Richmond, Wilmington, and Newbern for _money_--and I
think you will find that he looks to Hanson, the overseer, to furnish
him with the proof, and bring a gang of longshoremen up here from
Plymouth some dark night----"

"Oh, Marcy!" cried Mrs. Gray, starting from her chair and clasping her
hands in alarm, "don't speak of it!"

"I wish from the bottom of my heart that I need not have told you of
it," said the boy, getting upon his feet and pacing the floor with
restless, angry strides. "But Wat Gifford believes that something of the
sort is going to happen, and so do I. Wat didn't say so, but I am sure
that is what he would have told me if he had found me at home when he
came here. You knew there was danger in every one of those gold pieces
you brought home with you; else why did you take so much pains to put
them where you thought no one would be likely to find them?"

"It is true I did know it, and was afraid that if the news got abroad in
the settlement, some of our poor neighbors might be tempted to commit
crime," answered Mrs. Gray. "We never had so large an amount of money in
the house before, and its presence troubles me greatly; but I never
dreamed that we had anything to fear from an organized band of
freebooters."

"And the fear of what Beardsley will do, if he finds out that the money
is really in the house, is what troubles me," said the young pilot
dolefully. "That man is capable of any desperate deed when he thinks he
has the power on his side. I know you never thought of such a thing at
the time, but your trips about the country, which Wat Gifford says could
not have been made without an object of some sort, have excited a good
deal of talk among the neighbors. Captain Beardsley posted Hanson, and
Hanson, so Wat told me, is more to be feared than any one else, for he
is right here on the place. These secret enemies will drive us both
crazy."

"We'll not give them the satisfaction of knowing that they can trouble
us in the least," replied his mother, with dignity. "Now we will dismiss
them entirely from our minds, while you tell me all the interesting
things that happened during your cruise."

"There isn't a thing to tell," was Marcy's answer. "We sighted the
_Hollins_ inside Diamond Shoals, threw a couple of shrapnel at her and
she came to; that's all there was of it. Her skipper was a sailorman all
over, and plucky, too; and if he had had anything to fight with, he
would have made things lively for us. I never before felt so sorry for
anybody as I did for him; but of course I didn't have a chance to tell
him so. I may some day meet him under different circumstances."

When the boy said this he did not really believe that such a thing ever
could occur, but nevertheless it did. Strange things happen in this
world sometimes, and in process of time it came about that the young
pilot again stood face to face with the master of the _Mary Hollins_ no
longer a prisoner pleading with Captain Beardsley that his men might not
be ironed like felons, but standing free on the quarter-deck of an armed
vessel, with a hundred blue-jackets ready to do his bidding, and the
Stars and Stripes waving proudly and triumphantly above him. And
Beardsley--he was there, too; and perhaps we shall see what sort of
heart he kept up when he found himself thrust into the "brig" so quickly
that he did not have time to tell what his name was.

"How long does your leave of absence extend?" inquired Mrs. Gray, after
a little pause.

"Until I am ordered to report," replied Marcy, with a laugh. "Perhaps
the captain didn't know I wrote it out that way, but that isn't my
fault. It was his business to read the paper before signing it. If he
wants me he will have to send for me. You ought to have heard that
Newbern mob whoop and yell when the crew of the _Hollins_ were marched
off to jail. They called them 'Abolitionists' and 'nigger-lovers'; but
the prisoners kept their eyes straight to the front, and marched on as
though they didn't hear a word of it. It was a shame to treat brave men
that way."

Just as the young pilot ceased speaking there was a gentle knock at the
door; and so sudden and unexpected was it, that it brought both him and
his mother to their feet in a twinkling. How long had the person who
gave that knock been within reach of the door, was the first thought
that arose in the mind of each. Had some one crept along the hall and
listened at the key-hole in the hope of hearing some of their
conversation?

"If that is the case," Marcy whispered to his mother, "she has had her
trouble for her pains. We haven't said a dozen words that could have
been heard the length of this room. 'Come in!'"

The door opened to admit one of the numerous female house servants, who
announced that there was a gentleman on the gallery who had called to
see Mrs. Gray on very important private and particular business.

"She looks innocent enough," thought Marcy, who could not bring himself
to believe, as his mother evidently did, that some of the domestics were
watching their movements and reporting the result of their observations
to the overseer. "I don't think she heard a word, and she certainly
could not have seen anything." And then, finding that his mother was
looking at him as if she meant him to understand that she knew what the
visitor's business was, and desired him to take it off her hands, he
said, aloud: "Who is the gentleman, and do you know what he's got to say
that is so very important and particular?"

"I don't know, sah, what he want to speak about," answered the girl,
"but de man is Mr. Kelsey."

Marcy could hardly keep back an exclamation of disgust, and in an
instant he was on his guard. The man's name and the message he had sent
in warned him to be on the lookout for treachery. Kelsey was one of
Beardsley's "renters"--that is to say, he hired from the captain a few
acres of ground, on which he managed to raise enough corn and potatoes
to keep his family from absolute want, and a little log cabin in which
he found shelter when he was not absent on his hunting and thieving
expeditions. Marcy had not seen him since his return from Barrington,
but he had heard of him as a red-hot Confederate who went about
declaring that hanging was too good for Yankees and their sympathizers.
When Marcy heard of this, he told himself that the man was another Bud
Goble, who, when the pinch came, would take to the woods and stay there
as long as danger threatened.

"I'll be with him directly," he said, addressing himself to the girl,
who went out, closing the door behind her.

"What in the name of wonder can that worthless man want with me?"
whispered Mrs. Gray, when she thought she had given the domestic time to
get out of hearing. "He has never been in this house before except to
beg."

"And he wouldn't be here now if he hadn't been sent," replied the boy.

"Oh, Marcy!" said his mother.

"That is just what I mean. It isn't old clothes or grub that he is after
this time."

"But Beardsley couldn't have put him up to anything. He is in Newbern."

"No odds. He left plenty of friends behind to do his dirty work, and
this fellow, Kelsey, is one of them. It will take a sharper man than he
is to pull the wool over my eyes."

"Don't be over-confident, my son. He is not too insignificant--no one is
too insignificant these times to do us some terrible injury. Be careful
how you treat him and what you say to him. It might be dangerous to make
him angry, for he has powerful friends behind him. Don't be gone long,
for I shall be uneasy until you return."

"I'll be right back," promised Marcy; and, giving his mother a
reassuring kiss, he left the room and went out on the porch to see what
Beardsley's friend and spy wanted.

The latter looked just as he did the last time Marcy saw him--too lazy
to take a long breath. He was tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his
shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush
heap--in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could
find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as
shiftless, but the young pilot knew he wasn't. He was as sly as a fox
and as cunning as well, and Marcy confessed to himself that he stood
more in fear of him than he did of Captain Beardsley. When the man heard
Marcy's step upon the porch, he tried to assume the servile air which
was characteristic of poor Southern whites before the war; but he did
not succeed very well. His manner seemed to say that he knew he was
dealing with one he could crush whenever he felt like it, and of whom he
need not stand in fear; and Marcy was quick to notice it.

"Sarvent, sah," said Kelsey, rising to his feet and taking off his
tattered hat, which, however, he almost instantly replaced. "I heared
that you had got back again from sea, an' that you had whopped the
Yankees first time tryin', same as our fellers done down to
Charleston."

"Yes, sir," replied Marcy, seating himself, and depositing his feet on
the railing, as if to indicate that he was quite at the service of his
friend Kelsey as long as the latter wanted to talk to him. "We whipped
them, and we could do the same thing again." ["And that's nothing but
the truth," he added, to himself. "When an armed vessel meets one that's
not armed, the helpless one is bound to go under every time."]

It is hard to tell just what Kelsey expected the boy to say in response
to his greeting, but in spite of his usual self-control his face showed
that he had not looked for any such answer as this. Marcy spoke and
acted as if he were delighted with the success that had attended the
_Osprey's_ first cruise at sea, and proud of being able to say that he
was one of her crew.

"You sent in word that you desired to see my mother on very particular
business," continued Marcy. "She doesn't feel like seeing anybody
to-day--upset by the war news, you know--and I am here to speak for her.
It's nothing bad, I hope?"

Kelsey straightened up on his seat and assumed a business air, as if
these words had suggested an idea to him.

"Yes, it's kinder bad," said he. "We uns know that you are true blue,
fur if you wasn't you wouldn't be on that privateer; an' if your maw
wasn't true blue, she wouldn't a let you go."

["That sounds exactly like Beardsley," said Marcy, to himself.] "Well,
what of it? Didn't I do my duty faithfully?"

"I ain't sayin' nothing agin that," replied the man hastily.
"But--you're fur Jeff Davis, ain't you?"

Instead of answering in words, Marcy pulled down the corner of his right
eye and looked at Kelsey as if to ask him if he saw anything green in
it.

"What do ye mean by them movements?" demanded the visitor.

"I mean that I am not going to talk politics with you," was the reply.
"This settlement is full of traitors, and I'm going to hold my tongue
unless I know who I am talking to. If I do that, I shan't get into
trouble by speaking too freely in the hearing of a Yankee spy."

"But look a-here, Mister Marcy," protested Kelsey.

"If you came to pry into our private affairs, you might as well jump on
your mule and go home, for you'll not get a word from me. I ought to put
the dogs on you, for if all I hear is true you're the worst kind of a
traitor." ["And so you are," thought Marcy, closely watching the effect
of his words, although he did not seem to be doing so; "you're a traitor
to the old flag."]

The visitor was astonished beyond measure, and it was fully a minute
before he could collect his wits sufficiently to frame a reply.




                              CHAPTER II.

                           HIDING THE FLAGS.

"I think I have taken the right course," soliloquized the young pilot,
who mentally congratulated himself on the ease with which he had "got to
windward" of this sneaking spy. "If I fight him with his own weapons I
shall probably get more out of him than I could in any other way."

"You heared that I was a traitor?" exclaimed Kelsey, as soon as he could
speak. "Mister Marcy, the man who told you that told you a plumb lie,
kase I ain't. I whooped her up fur ole Car'liny when she went out, I
done the same when our gov'ner grabbed the forts along the coast, an' I
yelled fit to split when our folks licked 'em at Charleston. Any man in
the settlement or in Nashville will tell ye that them words of mine is
nothing but the gospel truth."

Marcy knew well enough that his visitor's words were true, but he shook
his head in a doubting way, as he replied:

"That may all be; but _I_ didn't hear you whoop and yell, and you must
not expect me to take your word for it. You must bring some proof before
I will talk to you."

"Why, how in sense could ye hear me whoop an' yell, seein' that you was
away to school in the first place, an' off on the ocean with Beardsley
in the next?" exclaimed Kelsey. "Ask Dillon, an' Colonel Shelby, an' the
postmaster, an' see if they don't say it's the truth."

"You have mentioned the names of some of our most respected citizens,"
said Marcy slowly, as if he were still reluctant to be convinced of the
man's sincerity. "And if they, or any of them, sent you up here to talk
to my mother--why, then, I shall have to listen to you; but mind you, if
you are trying to play a game on me----"

"Mister Marcy," said Kelsey solemnly, "I ain't tryin' to come no game.
Them men done it sure's you're born."

"Did what?"

"Sent me up here this mawnin'."

"That's one point gained, but won't mother be frightened when she hears
of it?" thought Marcy, leaning his elbows on his knees and covering his
face with his hands so that his visitor could not see it. "Some of the
best men in the country have so far forgotten their manhood, and the
friendship they once had for our family, that they can send this
sneaking fellow here to worm something out of us."

"I don't believe a word of it," he cried, jumping to his feet and
confronting his visitor.

"Ye--ye don't believe it?" faltered Kelsey, springing up in his turn.
"Well, I--I--look a-here, Mister Marcy, mebbe this is something else you
don't believe. Them men whose names I jest give you, say that you an'
your maw an' all the rest of the Gray family is Union. What do ye say to
_that?_"

"I say that they had better attend to their own business and let me
attend to mine," answered Marcy. "Are Colonel Shelby and the rest of
them for the Union?"

"Not much; an' nuther be I."

"Are you in favor of secession?"

"I reckon." replied Kelsey earnestly; and Marcy knew all the while that
he could not have told what the word secession meant.

"Then why don't you prove it--you and Colonel Shelby, and the rest of
the neighbors who are saying things behind my back that they don't care
to say to my face? Why don't you prove your loyalty to the South by
shouldering a musket and going into the army?"

"Why, we uns has got famblies to look out fur," exclaimed the visitor,
who had never had this matter brought squarely home to him before.

"That makes no difference," answered the boy, who wondered if Kelsey's
family would fare any worse while he was in the army than they did now,
while he was out of it. "Every man in this country must show his good
will in one way or another. And there's that loudmouthed fellow Allison,
who went out of his way to insult me in the post-office just before I
went to sea. Nashville is full of such braggarts as he is. When they
can't find anything else to talk about they talk about me; and I have
smelt powder while they haven't." ["No odds if it was our own powder and
the wind blew the smoke into my face," he said to himself.]

By this time Marcy had the satisfaction of seeing that he had taken the
wind completely out of Kelsey's sails, and that the man who had come
there to trouble him was troubled himself. He even began to fear that he
had gone too far, and that if he did not change his tactics the visitor
would go away without giving a hint of the errand that had brought him
to the house; for Kelsey picked up the hat he had placed upon the floor
beside his chair, put it on his head and leaned forward with his hands
on his knees, as if he were about to get upon his feet. That wouldn't do
at all. There was something in the wind--something that Captain
Beardsley, aided by Colonel Shelby and others, had studied up on purpose
to get Marcy into a scrape of some kind, and Marcy was very anxious to
know what it was.

"You hinted a while ago that Colonel Shelby had sent you here to tell me
some bad news," said the young pilot, in a much pleasanter tone of voice
than he had thus far used in addressing his visitor. "Are you ready now
to obey orders and tell me what it is?"

"Well, I dunno. I reckon mebbe I'd best ride down an' see the colonel
first," replied the man. But his actions said plainly that he _did_
know, and that he had no intention of facing his employer again until he
could tell him that his instructions had been carried out.

"Of course, you must do as you think best about that; but if it is
anything that concerns my mother or myself----"

"I should say so," exclaimed Kelsey. "I don't reckon it'll do any harm
to tell you--but ain't there anybody to listen? It's very important an'
private."

"I think you may speak with perfect freedom; but in order to make sure
of it----" Marcy finished the sentence by getting up and closing both
the doors that opened upon the veranda. "Now we're safe," said he;
whereupon Kelsey revealed the whole plot in less than a score of words.

"Mebbe you don't know it," said he, in a whisper which was so loud and
piercing that it could have been heard by an eavesdropper (if there had
been one) at least fifty feet away, "but you are harboring a traitor
right here on the place."

"Who is it?"

"Your mean sneak of an overseer."

It was now Marcy's turn to be astonished. He knew that there was not a
word of truth in what the man said, and that if the overseer really was
a Union man the planters round about would have sent a person of more
influence and better social standing than Kelsey to tell him of it; but
after all the plot was not as simple as it looked at first glance.

"Where's your proof?" was the first question he asked.

"Well, Hanson has been talkin' a heap to them he thought to be Union,
but it turned out that they wasn't. They was true to the flag of the
'Federacy."

"What do Colonel Shelby and the rest want me to do?" inquired Marcy,
catching at an idea that just then flashed through his mind. "If they
will write me a note stating the facts of the case and asking me to
discharge Hanson, I will attend to it before the sun goes down."

"Well, you see they don't keer to take a hand in the furse at all,
seein' that there's so many Union folks in the settlement," said Kelsey.
"They've got nice houses an' nigger quarters, an' they don't want 'em
burned up."

"But they are willing that I should get into trouble by discharging
Hanson, and put myself in the way of having my house and quarters
destroyed, are they?" exclaimed the boy, his face growing red with
indignation, although, as he afterward told his mother, there wasn't
really anything to arouse his indignation. "You may tell those gentlemen
that if they want the overseer run off the plantation, they can come
here and do it. If the Union men are as vindictive as Colonel Shelby
seems to think they are, I don't care to get them down on me."

"But the Union folks won't pester you uns," said Kelsey, speaking before
he thought.

"Ah! Why won't they?"

"Kase--kase they think you're one of 'em."

"I don't see how they can think so when they know that I belong to a
Confederate privateer."

"Them men, whose names I give ye a minute ago, thought that mebbe you'd
be willing to turn Hanson loose when you heared how he had been swingin'
his tongue about that there money."

Kelsey had come to the point at last. He looked hard at Marcy to see
what effect the words would have upon him, and Marcy returned his gaze
with an impassive countenance, although he felt his heart sinking within
him.

"What money?" he demanded, in so steady a voice that the visitor was
fairly staggered. The latter believed that there was rich booty hidden
somewhere about that old house, and he hoped in time to have the
handling of some of it.

"I mean the money your maw got when she went to Richmon' an' around,"
replied the man, who, in coon hunters' parlance, began to wonder if he
wasn't "barking up the wrong tree."

"Can you prove that she brought any money back with her?"

"No, I can't," answered Kelsey, in a tone which said as plainly as words
that he wished he could. "I--me--I mean that the neighbors suspicion
it."

"Oh, that's it. Let those officious neighbors keep on talking; and when
they have talked themselves blind, you may tell them, for me, that what
money we have is safe," said Marcy, with a good deal of emphasis on the
adjective. "If you want to see what mother brought back from the city,
go and look at the servants. Every one of them is dressed in a new suit.
Now go on and tell me the bad news. I'm getting impatient to hear it."

"Heavings an' 'arth! Haven't I told it to ye already?" Kelsey almost
shouted. "I think it is bad enough when you an' your maw are keepin',
right here on the plantation, a man who is all the time waitin' an'
watchin' fur a chance to do harm to both of ye. If you don't think so,
all right. I was a fule fur comin' here, an' I reckon I'd best be
lumberin'. If anything happens to ye, bear in mind that I give ye fair
warnin'."

"I will," answered Marcy. "And in the mean time do you bear in mind that
I am ready to discharge Hanson at any time Colonel Shelby proves to my
satisfaction that he is a dangerous man to have around; but I shall make
no move unless the colonel says so, for I don't want to get into trouble
with my neighbors." ["I wonder if I have done the right thing," thought
Marcy, as the visitor mounted his mule and rode out of the yard. "The
next plotter I hear from will be Hanson himself."]

The boy remained motionless in his chair until Kelsey disappeared behind
the trees that bordered the road, and then got up and walked into the
sitting-room, where he found his mother pacing the floor. Her anxiety
and her impatience to learn what it was that brought Kelsey to the house
were so overpowering that she could not sit still.

"Another plot to ruin us," whispered the boy, as he entered the room and
closed the door behind him.

"Oh, Marcy, it is just what I was afraid of," replied Mrs. Gray. "Who is
at the bottom of it this time?"

"The same old rascal, Lon Beardsley; but he's got backing I don't like.
There's Colonel Shelby for one, the postmaster for another, and Major
Dillon for a third."

"The most influential men in the neighborhood," gasped Mrs. Gray,
sinking into the nearest chair. "And the best."

"They used to be the best, but they are anything but that now. When men
will stoop as low as they have, they are mean enough for anything. I
suppose you ought to hear what that fellow said to me, but I don t know
how I can tell it to you."

"Go on," said his mother, trying to bear up bravely. "I must hear every
word."

Marcy knew that it was right and necessary that his mother should be
kept fully informed regarding the plots that were laid against them, and
that she should know what the planters were thinking and saying about
her; for if she were kept in ignorance, she would be at a loss how to
act and speak in a sudden emergency. She might be surprised into saying
something in the presence of a secret enemy that would be utterly
ruinous. So he drew a chair to her side and told her everything that had
passed between Kelsey and himself. He did not try to smooth it over, but
repeated the conversation word for word; and when he came to the end,
his mother was as much in the dark as Marcy was himself. She said she
couldn't understand it.

"There are but two things about it that are plain to me," answered
Marcy, "perhaps three. One is that the house is watched by somebody, and
that the neighbors knew I was at home almost as soon as you knew it
yourself. Another is that the suspicions aroused in the minds of some of
our watchful neighbors are so strong that they amount to positive
conviction. They are as certain that there is money in this house as
they would be if they had caught you in the act of hiding it."

"Doesn't that prove that the overseer is not the only spy there is on
the place?" said Mrs. Gray. "And I was so careful."

"I never will believe that anybody watched you at night," said Marcy
quickly. "The neighbors saw you when you went away and came back."

"But I brought goods with me on purpose to allay their suspicions."

"I am really afraid you didn't succeed. The other thing I know is, that
you need not think yourself safe out of Captain Beardsley's reach even
when he is at sea. As I said before, he has friends ashore to work for
him while he is absent."

"What can we do? What do you advise?" asked his mother, after she had
taken time to think the matter over.

"There is but one thing we can do, and that is to wait as patiently as
we can and see what is going to happen next. This last plot is not fully
developed yet, and until it is we must not make a move in any direction.
I am as impatient as you are, and so I think I will ride out to the
field and give the overseer a chance to say a word if he feels in the
humor for it."

"Be very cautious, Marcy," said Mrs. Gray.

The young pilot replied that sleeping or waking he was always on the
alert, and went out to the little log stable, which did duty as a barn,
to saddle his horse. A long lane led through the negro quarter to the
field in which the hands were putting in the time in clearing out fence
corners and burning brush, while waiting for the early crops to get high
enough for hoeing. The overseer's mule was hitched to the fence, and the
overseer himself sat on a convenient stump, watching the hands at their
work, and whittling the little switch that served him for a riding-whip.
The man was almost a stranger to Marcy. The latter had seen and spoken
to him a few times since his return from Barrington, but of course he
did not like him, for he could not forget that his mother was afraid of
him, and would be glad to see him leave the place. He liked him still
less two minutes later, for, as he drew rein beside the overseer's perch,
threw his right leg over the horn of his saddle and nodded to the man,
the latter said, first looking around to make sure that none of the blacks
were within hearing:

"I was sorry to see that man ride away from the big house a while ago."

"What man?" inquired Marcy. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the
front of the house was entirely concealed from view, and that the road
that ran before it "was shut out from sight by the trees and the
whitewashed negro quarter. It followed then, as a matter of course, that
Hanson could not have seen anybody ride away from the house. He was deep
enough in the plot to know that if mother and son had not had a visitor,
they ought to have had one.

"I suspicioned it was that shiftless, do-nothing chap, Kelsey," replied
the overseer. "Looked sorter like his mu-el."

"Oh, yes; Kelsey has been up to see us," answered Marcy. And then he
tapped his boot with his whip and waited to see what was coming next. If
the overseer wanted to talk, he might talk all he pleased; but Marcy was
resolved that he would not help him along. Hanson twisted about on the
stump, cleared his throat once or twice, and, seeing that the boy was
not disposed to break the silence, said, as if he were almost afraid to
broach the subject:

"Have much of anything to talk about?"

"He talked a good deal, but didn't say much."

"Mention my name?"

"Yes. He mentioned yours and Shelby's and Dillon's and the
postmaster's."

"Say anything bad about us?" continued the overseer, after waiting in
vain for the boy to go on and repeat the conversation he had held with
Kelsey.

"Not so very bad," answered Marcy, looking up and down the long fence to
see how the work was progressing.

"Looka-here, Mister Marcy," said Hanson desperately. "Kelsey told you I
was Union, didn't he? Come now, be honest."

"If by being honest you mean being truthful, I want to tell you that I
am never any other way," said the boy emphatically. "What object could I
have in denying it? I don't care a cent what your politics are so long
as you mind your own business, and don't try to cram your ideas down my
throat. But I'll not allow myself to be led into a discussion. Kelsey
did say that you are Union; and if you are, I don't see why you stay in
this country. You can't get out any too quick."

"Are you going to discharge me?"

"No, I am not; and I sent word to Shelby and the rest that if they want
you run off the place, they can come up here and do it. I shall have no
hand in it."

Marcy could read the overseer's face a great deal better than the
overseer could read Marcy's; and it would have been clear to a third
party that Hanson was disappointed, and that there was something he
wanted to say and was afraid to speak about. That was the money that was
supposed to be concealed in the house.

"Was that all Kelsey said to you?" he asked, at length.

"Oh, no. He rattled on about various things--spoke of the ease with
which the _Osprey_ captured that Yankee schooner, and let fall a word or
two about the battle in Charleston harbor."

"Is _that_ all he said to you?"

"I believe he said something about being a good Confederate, and I asked
him why he didn't prove it by shouldering a musket. I don't go about
boasting of the great things I would do if I were only there. There's no
need of it, for I have been there." ["But it was because I couldn't help
myself," he added mentally.]

"But folks say you're Union, all the same," said Hanson.

"What folks? Are they soldiers?"

"No. Citizens."

"Then I don't care that what they say," replied Marcy, snapping his
fingers in the air. "When they put uniforms on and show by their actions
that they mean business, I will talk to them, and not before."

Marcy waited patiently for the overseer to say "money," and the latter
waited impatiently for Marcy to say it; and when at last the boy made up
his mind that he had heard all he cared to hear from Hanson, he brought
his leg down from the horn of his saddle, placed his foot in the
stirrup, and gathered up the reins as if he were about to ride away.

"Kelsey didn't say nothing to get you and your maw down on me, did he?"
inquired Hanson, when he observed these movements.

"I shouldn't like for to lose my place just because I am strong for the
Union and dead against secession."

"If you lose your place on that account, it'll be because Colonel Shelby
and his friends will have it so," answered Marcy. "You are hired to do
an overseer's work; and as long as you attend to that and nothing else
you will have no trouble with me. You may depend upon that."

"But before you go I'd like to know, pine-plank, whether you are
friendly to me or not," continued Hanson, who was obliged to confess to
himself that he had not learned the first thing, during the interview,
that could be used against Marcy or his mother.

"I am a friend to you in this way," was the answer. "If I found you out
there in the woods cold and hungry, and hiding from soldiers who were
trying to make a prisoner of you, I would feed and warm you; and I
wouldn't care whether you had a gray jacket or a blue coat on."

"He's a trifle the cutest chap I've run across in many a long day,"
muttered the overseer, as Marcy turned his filly about and rode away. "I
couldn't make him tell whether he was Union or secesh, although I give
him all the chance in the world, and he didn't say "money" a single
time. Now, what's to be done? If the money is there and Beardsley is
bound to have it, he'd best be doing something before that sailor gets
back, for they say he's lightning and will fight at the drop of the hat.
I reckon I'd better make some excuse to ride over town so't I can see
Colonel Shelby."

"I think I have laid that little scheme most effectually," was what
Marcy Gray said to himself as he rode away from the stump on which the
overseer was sitting. "They haven't got a thing out of me, and I have
left the matter in their own hands. If there is anything done toward
getting Hanson away from this country (and I wish to goodness there
might be), Shelby and his hypocritical gang can have the fun of doing
it, and shoulder all the responsibility afterward."

But what was the object of the plot? That was what "banged" Marcy, and
he told his mother so after he had given her a minute description of his
brief interview with the overseer. Was it possible that there were some
strong Union men in the neighborhood, and that Beardsley hoped Marcy
would incur their enmity by discharging Hanson on account of his alleged
principles? Marcy knew better than to believe that, and so did his
mother.

"I'll tell you what I think to be the most reasonable view of the case,"
said the boy, after taking a few turns across the floor and spending
some minutes in a brown study. "Beardsley knows there is no man in the
family; that we'd be only too glad to have somebody to go to for advice;
and he hoped we would take that ignorant Hanson for a counselor, if he
could make us believe that he was really Union. But Hanson didn't fool
me, for he didn't go at it in the right way. He's secesh all over. The
next thing on the program will be something else."

"I trust it will not be a midnight visit from a mob," said his mother,
who trembled at the bare thought of such a thing.

"So do I; but if they come, we'll see what they will make by it. They
might burn the house without finding anything to reward them for their
trouble."

"Oh, Marcy. You surely don't think they would do anything so
barbarous."

"They might. Think of what that Committee of Safety did at Barrington."

"But what would we do?"

"Live in the quarter, as Elder Bowen and the other Union men in
Barrington did after their houses were destroyed. And if they burned the
servants' homes as well as our own, We'd throw up a shelter of some sort
in the woods. I don't reckon that Julius and I have forgotten how to
handle axes and build log cabins. The practice we have had in building
turkey traps would stand---- Say," whispered Marcy suddenly, at the same
time putting his arm around his mother's neck and speaking the words
close to her ear, "if a mob should come here to-night and go over the
house, we'd be ruined. There are those Union flags, you know."

"I never once thought of them," was the frightened answer. "Suppose I
had had a mob for visitors while you were at sea? Our home would be in
ashes now. Those flags are dangerous things, and must be disposed of
without loss of time. I am sorry you brought them home with you. Don't
you think you had better destroy them while you have them in mind?"

"Of course I will do it if you say so, and think it will make you feel
any safer; but I was intending--you see----"

His countenance fell, and his mother was quick to notice it. "What did
you intend to do with them?" she asked.

"One of them used to float over the academy," replied Marcy. "Dick
Graham, a Missouri boy, than whom a better fellow never lived, stole it
out of the colonel's room one night because he did not want to see it
insulted and destroyed, as it would have been if Rodney and his friends
could have got their hands upon it. He gave it to me because he knew it
would some day be something to feel proud over, and said he hoped to
hear that it had been run up again."

"But, Marcy, you dare not hoist it here," exclaimed Mrs. Gray.

"Not now; but there may come a time when I shall dare do it. The other
flag--well, the other was made by a Union girl in Barrington, who had to
work on it by stealth, because her sister, and every other member of her
family except her father, were the worst kind of secesh. Rodney thought
sure he was going to put the Stars and Bars on the tower when the Union
colors were stolen, but our fellows got mine up first, and would have
kept it there if they had had to fight to do it. But I'll put them in
the stove if you think best."

"You need not do anything of the kind," said Mrs. Gray, whose patriotism
had been awakened by the simple narrative. "I shall not permit a party
of beardless boys to show more loyalty than I am willing to show
myself."

"Bully for you, mother!" cried Marcy. "We'll see both of them in the air
before many months more have passed over our heads. Now, think of some
good hiding place for them, and I'll put them there right away. Not in
the ground, you know, for if the Union troops should ever come marching
through here, we should want to get them out in a hurry."

"How would it do to sew them up in a bed-quilt?" said Mrs. Gray,
suggesting the first "good hiding place" that came into her mind.

"That's the very spot," replied Marcy. "Put them in one of mine, and
then I shall have the old flag over me every night."

No time was lost in carrying out this decision, and in a few minutes
mother and son were locked in the boy's room, and busy stitching the
precious pieces of bunting into one of the quilts. It never occurred to
them to ask what they would do or how they would feel if some half-clad,
shivering rebel should find his way into the room and walk off with that
quilt without so much as saying "by your leave." Probably they never
dreamed that the soldiers of the Confederacy would be reduced to such
straits.




                              CHAPTER III.

                      BEARDSLEY BETRAYS HIMSELF.

Never before had the hours hung as heavily upon Marcy Gray's hands as
they did at the period of which we write. There was literally nothing he
could do--at least that he _wanted_ to do. He did not care to read
anything except the newspapers, and they came only once a day; he had
never learned how to lounge around and let the hours drag themselves
away; he very soon grew weary of sailing about the sound in the _Fairy
Belle_ with the boy Julius for a companion; and so he spent a little of
his time in visiting among the neighboring planters, and a good deal
more in "pottering" among his mother's flower beds. Visiting was the
hardest work he had ever done; but he knew he couldn't shirk it without
exciting talk, and there was talk enough about him in the settlement
already.

To a stranger it would have looked as though he had nothing to complain
of. He was cordially received wherever he went, often heard himself
spoken of as "one of our brave boys" (although what he had done that
was so very brave Marcy himself could not understand), and visitors at
Mrs. Gray's house were as numerous as they ever had been; but Marcy and
his mother were people who could not be easily deceived by such a show
of friendship. Some of it, as they afterward learned, was genuine; while
the rest was assumed for the purpose of leading them on to "declare"
themselves. It was a mean thing for neighbors to be guilty of, but you
must remember that, like Rodney Gray when he wrote that mischievous
letter to Bud Goble, they did not know all the time what they were
doing. Of course the high-spirited Marcy grew restive under such
treatment; and when, after long waiting, the postmaster handed him a
letter from Captain Beardsley, ordering him to report on board the
_Osprey_ without loss of time, he did not feel as badly over it as he
once thought he should. On the contrary, he appeared to be very jubilant
when he showed the letter to Allison and half a score of other young
rebels who were always to be found loafing around the post-office at
mail time.

"I'm off to sea again," said he. "Now the Yankees had better look out."

"It must be an enjoyable life, Marcy," replied Allison. "You see any
amount of fun and excitement, draw big prize-money in addition to your
regular wages, and, better than all, you run no sort of risk. It may
surprise you to know that I have been turning the matter over in my mind
a good deal of late, and have come to the conclusion that I should enjoy
being one of a privateer's crew. What do you think about it?"

"I am not acquainted with a single fellow who would enjoy it more,"
answered Marcy, who told himself that Allison was just coward enough to
engage in some such disreputable business. "You are just the lad for it.
It is such fun to bring a swift vessel to and haul down the old flag in
the face of men who are powerless to defend it."

Sharp as Marcy Gray was, his strong love for the Union and his intense
hatred for the business in which he was perforce engaged, sometimes led
him to come dangerously near to betraying himself. Allison looked
sharply at him, but there was nothing in Marcy's face to indicate that
he did not mean every word he said.

"I am heartily glad I am going to sea again," continued the latter; and
he told nothing but the truth. The companionship of the ignorant
foreigners who composed the _Osprey's_ crew was more to his liking than
daily intercourse with pretended friends who were constantly watching
for a chance to get him into trouble.

"Do you think I could get on with Captain Beardsley?" inquired Allison.

"You might. The crew was full when I left the schooner, but I will speak
to the captain, if you would like to have me."

"I really wish you would, for I am anxious to do something for the
glorious cause of Southern independence. When do you sail?"

"I don't know. About all the captain says in his letter is that he wants
me to report immediately."

"Does he say whether or not the _Hollins_ has been sold yet?"

"Oh, yes; he speaks of that, and congratulates me on the fact that I
have eight hundred and seventy-live dollars more to my credit on the
schooner's books than I did when I left her at Newbern."

"W-h-e-w!" whistled Allison. "How long did it take you to make the
capture?"

"Four or five hours, I should say."

"Eight hundred and seventy-five dollars for four or five hours' work!
Marcy, you have struck a gold mine. You will be as rich as Julius Caesar
in less than a year."

"How long do you suppose Uncle Sam will allow such--such work to be kept
up?" exclaimed Marcy.

"Oh, no doubt he would be glad to stop it now if he could; but when he
tries it, he will find that he's got the hardest job on his hands he
ever undertook. There never was a better place for carrying on such
business than the waters of North Carolina. Our little inlets are too
shallow to float a heavy man-of-war."

"No matter how big the job may be, you will find that these small-fry
privateers" (it was right on the end of Marcy's tongue to say "pirates")
"will be swept from the face of the earth in less than a year; so that I
shall have no chance to get rich. But I'll have to be going, for I must
start for Newbern this very night. I suppose you will all be in the army
by the time I get back, so good-by."

Allison and his friends shook hands with him, wished him another
successful voyage, and Marcy mounted and rode away, his filly never
breaking her lope until she turned through the gate into the yard, and
drew up before the steps that led to the porch. His mother met him at
the door and knew as soon as she looked at him that he had news for
her.

"Yes, I've got orders from Beardsley," said the boy, without waiting to
be questioned. "And if Jack were only here, and I was about to engage in
some honorable business, I should be glad to go. Mother, on the day we
captured the _Hollins_ we robbed somebody of fifty-six thousand
dollars."

"Oh, Marcy, is it not dreadful!" said Mrs. Gray.

"It is, for a fact. We're having a bully time now, but the day will come
when we'll have to settle with the fiddler. You will see. Yes, the
vessel and her cargo sold for fifty-six thousand dollars. Half of it
went to the government, and half of the remainder was divided among the
three officers, Beardsley getting the lion's share, I bet you. The
sixteen members of the crew get an equal share of the other fourteen
thousand, the difference in rank between the petty officers and foremast
hands being so slight that Beardsley did not think it worth while to
give one more than another; but he hints that he has got something laid
by for me."

"My son, it will burn your fingers," said Mrs. Gray.

"I can't help it if it does. I'll have to take all he offers me, but, of
course, I don't expect to keep it. Now, mother, please help me get off.
The longer I fool around home the harder it will be to make a start."

Marcy wanted to caution his mother to look out for Hanson while he was
gone; but he did not do it, for he well knew that she had enough to
trouble her already, and that the mention of the overseer's name would
awaken all her old fears of spies and organized bands of robbers. He
sent word to Morris, the coachman, to have the carriage brought to the
door, loitered about doing nothing while his mother packed his valise,
and in twenty minutes more was on his way to Newbern, which he reached
without any mishap, not forgetting, however, to send a telegram on from
Boydtown informing Beardsley that his orders had been received, and that
the pilot was on his way to join the _Osprey_.

"And I wish I might find her sunk at her dock, and so badly smashed that
she never could be raised and repaired," was what he thought every time
he looked out of the car window and ran his eyes over the crowds of
excited people that were gathered upon the platforms of all the depots
they passed. "But, after all, what difference does it make? If I don't
go to sea I shall have to live among secret enemies, and I don't know
but one thing is about as bad as the other. If any poor mortal ever
lived this way before, I am sorry for him."

Although Marcy was almost a stranger in Newbern, he had no difficulty in
finding his vessel when he got out of the cars. He walked straight to
her, and while he was yet half a block away, the sight of her masts told
him that she was still on top of the water. She would soon be ready to
sail, too, for her crew were rushing her stores aboard, while Captain
Beardsley walked his quarter-deck smoking a cigar and looking on. His
face seemed to say that he was a little surprised to see his pilot; but
if he was he did not show it in his greeting.

"Well, there, you did come back, didn't yon?" said he, extending his
hand.

"Of course I came back," replied Marcy. "What else did yon expect me to
do? I was on the road in less than two hours after your order came to
hand."

"That's prompt and businesslike," said the captain approvingly. "But I
didn't look for you to appear quite so soon. How's everybody to home?"

"All right as far as I could see; and Allison wants to join your crew."

"The idea!" exclaimed Captain Beardsley. "Well, he can just stay where
he is for all of me, hollering for the Confederacy and doing never a
thing to help us gain our independence. His place is in the army, and I
won't have no haymakers aboard of me. See any Union folks while you was
to home?"

"I saw and talked with one man who said he was for the Union," answered
the young pilot. He was prepared for the question, and positive that if
he managed the matter rightly, Beardsley would soon let him know whether
or not he was concerned in that little plot, as Marcy believed he was.
But, as it happened, no management was necessary, for keeping a secret
was the hardest work Beardsley ever did.

"Did, hey?" he exclaimed, throwing the stump of his cigar over the stern
and looking very angry indeed. "I always suspected that man Hanson. You
discharged him, of course."

"No, I didn't," replied Marcy. "It wouldn't have been safe. I told
Kelsey that if the colonel and his friends desired that he should be run
off the place, they could attend to the matter themselves. I wouldn't
have the first thing to do with it. I was given to understand that there
were many Union men in the settlement, and I didn't care to give them an
excuse for burning us out of house and home."

"That was perfectly right. And what did Shelby say?"

"I didn't hear, for he sent no message to me."

"Did you say anything to Hanson about it?"

"I did, and told him that as long as he attended strictly to his
business he would have no trouble with me."

Marcy had purposely avoided speaking Colonel Shelby's name and Hanson's,
preferring to let Captain Beardsley do it himself. The latter walked
squarely into the trap without appearing to realize that he had done it,
and the young pilot was satisfied that his commander was the man who
needed watching more than anybody else.

"I can't say that I hope Beardsley will be killed or drowned during the
cruise," thought Marcy. "But I do say that if he was out of the way I
would have less trouble with my neighbors."

"Never mind," said Beardsley, after a little pause. "When I get home I
will ask Shelby and Dillon to tell me all about it; and if that overseer
of yourn is really Union, perhaps I can make him see that he had better
go up to the United States, where he belongs."

The captain took a turn or two across the deck, looked up at the
topmasts as he might have done if the schooner had been under way and he
wanted to make sure that everything was drawing, and then he leaned up
against the rail.

"Oh!" said he, as if the thought had just come to him, "what do you
think of your good fortune? Eight hundred dollars don't grow in every
boy's dooryard. I tell you. And, Marcy," he went on in a lower tone,
"I've got as much more laid by for you. I told you I would do the fair
thing, and I meant every word of it. You're pilot, you know."

"Thank you, sir," replied the boy--not because he felt grateful to
Captain Beardsley for giving him nearly nine hundred dollars of
another's man's money, but because he knew he was expected to say it.

"Seventeen hundred dollars and better will keep your folks in grub and
clothes for quite a spell, won't it?" the captain continued. "But law!
what am I saying? It ain't a drop in the bucket to such rich people as
you be."

Marcy listened, but said nothing. He thought he knew what Beardsley had
on his mind.

"Some folks pertend to think we're going to have the very toughest kind
of a war, but I don't," said the latter. "The Yankees don't come of
fighting stock, like we Southern gentlemen do; but if a war should come,
I suppose your folks are well fixed for it?"

"About as well fixed as most of the planters in the settlement,"
answered the pilot. "You know we've had the best of crops for a year or
two back."

"But I mean--you see--any money?" inquired the captain cautiously--so
very cautiously that he thought it necessary to whisper the words.

"Oh, yes; we have money. How could we live without it?"

"That's so; how could you? I reckon you've got right smart of a lot,
ain't you?"

"Mother has some in the bank at Wilmington, but just how much I don't
know. I never asked her."

The young pilot's gaze was fastened upon the men who were at work
getting the provisions aboard, but for all that, he could see that
Beardsley was looking at him as if he meant to read his most secret
thoughts.

"I don't believe there's no money in that there house," was what the
captain was saying to himself.

"Sly old fox," thought Marcy. "I knew he would betray his secret if I
only held my tongue and gave him a chance to do it." And then he asked
the captain when he expected to get the schooner ready for sea, and
whether or not any prizes had been brought into port during his
absence.

"There's been one prize brought in worth ten thousand dollars more'n
our'n, dog-gone it all--there she is right over there--and there's been
three blockade-runners went out and two come in," was the captain's
answer. "I didn't see why they should call 'em blockade-runners when we
didn't think there was a blockade at all, excepting the paper one that
appeared in Lincoln's proclamation; but seeing that the brig _Herald_
ain't been heard from since she run out of Wilmington, I begin to
mistrust that there's war vessels outside, and that the _Osprey_ may
have a chance to show her heels. If that happens we'll make the best
time we know how for Crooked Inlet, and trust to you to bring us
through."

"You won't need any help from me," was what the boy said to himself.
"I'll bet my share of that prize-money, that if we get into trouble with
a Union cruiser you will take command of the schooner yourself and sail
her through Crooked Inlet as slick as falling off a log."

"The folks around here and Wilmington have been hoping that the _Herald_
might be captured, and that the United States people will have the
backbone to hold fast to her," added Captain Beardsley.

"Why do they hope for any such bad luck as that?" inquired Marcy,
considerably surprised.

"May be it wouldn't be bad luck. You see she is a Britisher, the
_Herald_ is, and her cargo was consigned to an English house all fair
and square. A blockade, to be legal and binding upon foreign nations,
must be effectual," said the captain, quoting the language his agent had
often used in his hearing. "A paper blockade won't do; and if the
Yankees can't send ships enough here to shut up our ports completely,
any Britisher or Frenchman can run in and out as often as he feels like
it, and the Yankees dassent do a thing to him. If the _Herald_ has been
captured she will have to be given up."

"But suppose Uncle Sam won't give her up?"

"We are hoping he won't, for that will get the British folks down on
him; and between the two of us we'll give him such a licking that he'll
never get over it. See?"

Yes; Marcy saw, now that the situation had been explained to him, but it
was something he had never thought of before. Almost the first lesson he
learned in history was that England had no love for the United States,
and if she took a hand in the war that was surely coming, why then----

"Why, then, France may help Uncle Sam," exclaimed Marcy. "She has always
been friendly to us, and didn't she send troops here during our
Revolutionary war to help us whip the English?"

"She did; but what was the reason she sent them troops over here?"
demanded the captain, who had heard this question discussed a good many
times while Marcy was at home on his leave of absence. "Was it because
she had any love for republican--republican--ah--er--institutions? No,
sir. It was because she wanted to spite the English for taking Canady
away from her. France won't lift a hand to help the Yankees if we get
into a row with them."

Beardsley took another turn about his quarter-deck, lighted a fresh
cigar, and became confidential.

"Something tells me that this business of privateering ain't a going to
last long, and so I think some of dropping it and starting out in
another," said he. "Any idea what it is?"

Marcy replied that he had not.

"Well, it's trading--running the blockade."

"To what ports?" asked the boy.

"I can't rightly tell till I get some word from them vessels that's just
went out," was the answer. "But it'll be Nassau or Havana, one of the
two. I'll take cotton out--cotton is king, you know, and must be had to
keep all them working people in England from starving--and bring
medicine back. Medicine is getting skurse and high-priced already. And
percussion caps. They're the things you can make money on. Why, I have
heard it said that there wasn't enough gun caps in the Confederacy to
fight a battle with till Captain Semmes made that tower of his through
the Northern States, buying powder and bullets, and making contracts
with the dollar-loving Yankees to build cannon to shoot their own kin
with. But I want to see how the land lays before I go into the business
of running the blockade. If there's big risk and little profit I ain't
in."

"What port will you run out of?" was Marcy's next question; and when the
captain said it would probably be Wilmington, the boy was delighted, for
he expected to hear him announce that after he gave up privateering and
took to blockade-running he would no longer need the services of a
pilot. But if such a thought came into Beardsley's mind he did not speak
it aloud. Just then he was called to another part of the deck and Marcy
picked up his valise and went below.

"Beardsley doesn't mean to let me go," he soliloquized, as he tossed the
valise into his bunk and opened the locker in which he had stowed his
bedding for safe-keeping. "He's got me fast, and there's no chance for
escape as long as the _Osprey_ remains in commission. Well, there's one
comfort: Beardsley is not a brave man, and he'll make haste to lay the
schooner up the minute he has reason to believe that it is growing
dangerous outside."

Marcy went on deck again, and having nothing to do with the loading of
the vessel, sauntered around with his hands in his pockets. He fully
expected that Beardsley would have something more to say about the money
that was supposed to be hidden in Mrs. Gray's house; but he didn't, for
the captain had almost come to the conclusion that there was no money
there. If there was, Marcy could not be surprised into acknowledging the
fact, and so Beardsley thought it best to let the matter drop until he
could go home and hold a consultation with the overseer.

Bright and early the next morning the privateer cast off her fasts and
stood down the river, reaching the sound in time to catch the flood tide
that hurried her up toward Crooked Inlet. It was now the middle of July,
and the Union and the Confederacy stood fairly opposed to each other.
The Confederate Government, having established itself at Richmond, had
pushed its outposts so far to the north that their sentries could see
the dome of the Capitol across the Potomac. There were nearly eight
hundred thousand square miles in the eleven seceded States, and of this
immense territory all that remained to the Union were the few acres of
ground enclosed within the walls of Fortress Monroe and Forts Pickens,
Taylor, and Jefferson. Loyal Massachusetts men had been murdered in the
streets of Baltimore; battles of more or less importance had been fought
both in the East and West, and on the very day that Marcy joined the
privateer, the future leader of the Army of the Potomac won a complete
victory over the rebel forces at Rich Mountain. The Richmond papers had
very little to say about this fight, except to assure their readers that
it was a matter of no consequence whatever; but they had a good deal to
say concerning the "gallant exploit" that Captain Semmes had performed a
few days before at the passes of the Mississippi. Well, it was a brave
act--one worthy of a better cause--to run the little _Sumter_ out in the
face of a big ship like the Brooklyn and when Marcy read of it he
recalled what his Cousin Rodney had once said to him while they were
talking about sailor Jack, who was then somewhere on the high seas:

"He may never get back," said Rodney. "We'll have a navy of our own one
of these days, and then every ship that floats the old flag will have to
watch out. We'll light bonfires on every part of the ocean."

That was just what Captain Semmes intended to do, and history tells how
faithfully he carried out the instructions of the Richmond Government.

Somewhat to Marcy's surprise, Captain Beardsley turned the command over
to him when the schooner reached Crooked Inlet, and Marcy took her
safely through and out to sea. If there were any war ships on the
coast--and it turned out that there were, for the brig _Herald_ had been
captured and taken to a Northern port--they were stationed farther down
toward Hatteras Inlet, and the schooner's lookouts did not see any of
them until she had been some hours at sea. At daylight on the morning of
the third day out the thrilling cry from the crosstrees "sail ho!"
created a commotion on the privateer's deck, and brought Marcy Gray up
the ladder half dressed.

"Where away?" shouted Captain Beardsley.

"Broad on our weather beam and standing straight across our bows," was
the encouraging response from aloft.

"Can you make her out?" asked the captain, preparing to mount to the
crosstrees with a spy-glass in his hand. "You're sure she isn't a
cruiser?"

"No, sir. She's a brig, and she's running along with everything set."

"Then we must cut her off or she'll get away from us. Put a
fifteen-second shell in that bow gun, Tierney! Stand by the color
halliards, Marcy!"

These orders were obeyed with an "Ay, ay, sir," although the brig was
yet so far away that she could not be seen from the deck; but as the two
vessels were sailing diagonally toward each other, she did not long
remain invisible. The moment Marcy caught sight of her top-hamper, and
while he stood with the halliards in his hand waiting for the order to
run up the Stars and Stripes, Captain Beardsley began swearing most
lustily and shouting orders to his mates, the sheets were let out, the
helm put down, and the privateer fell off four or five points. Marcy
knew the meaning of this before the excited and angry Beardsley yelled,
at the top of his voice:

"The rascal is trying to dodge us. He's got lookouts aloft. Run up that
flag, Marcy, and see if that won't quiet his feelings. Them war ships
down to Hatteras have posted him, and if we don't handle ourselves just
right we'll never bring him within range."

Marcy lost no time in running up the old flag; but if the master of the
brig saw it he was not deceived by it. He showed no disposition to run
back to Hatteras, and put himself under protection of the war ships
there, as Marcy thought and hoped he would, but put his vessel before
the wind, squared his yards, and trusted to his heels. It looked to
Marcy like a most desperate undertaking, for you will remember that the
schooner was far ahead of the brig, and that the merchant captain was
about to run by her. It didn't seem possible that he could succeed, but
the sequel proved that he knew just what his vessel was capable of
doing. She came up at a "hand gallop," and finally showed herself from
water-line to main-truck in full view of the privateer's crew. Her
canvas loomed up like a great white cloud, and her low, black hull, by
comparison, looked no bigger than a lead pencil. She went like the wind,
and Marcy Gray told himself that she was the most beautiful object he
had ever seen.

"I hope from the bottom of my heart that she will get away," was the one
thought that filled his mind.

Perhaps the wish would have been even more fervent if he had known who
was aboard that brig.




                              CHAPTER IV.

                          TWO NARROW ESCAPES.

"Another Cuban trader," shouted Captain Beardsley, standing erect upon
the crosstrees and shaking his eye-glass in the air. "She's worth double
what the _Hollins_ was, dog-gone it all, and if we lose her we are just
a hundred thousand dollars out of pocket. Pitch that shell into her,
Tierney. Take a stick out of her and I'll double your prize money. Run
up our own flag, Marcy. May be it will bring him to his senses."

The howitzer's crew sprang at the word. The canvas covering was torn off
the gun and cast aside, the train-tackles were manned, and a minute
afterward a fifteen-second shrapnel went shrieking toward the brig, all
the privateer's men standing on tiptoe to watch the effect of the shot.
To Marcy's great delight the missile struck the water far short of the
mark, _ricocheted_ along the surface a few hundred yards farther, and
finally exploded, throwing up a cloud of spray, but doing no harm to the
brig, which never loosened tack or sheet, but held gallantly on her way.
A moment after the shrapnel exploded, her flag--the old flag--fluttered
out from under the lee of her spanker, and little puffs of smoke arose
from her port quarter. Some of her crew were firing at the privateer
with rifles. Of course, the distance was so great that they never heard
the whistle of the bullet, but it was an act of defiance that drove
Captain Beardsley almost frantic.

"When we catch her I'll hang the men who fired those shots," he shouted,
jumping up and down on his lofty perch. "What are you standing there
gaping at, Tierney? Give that gun more elevation and try her again."

"I had her up to the last notch in the rear sight, sir," replied
Tierney. "I can't give the gun any more elevation. The cascabel is down
to the bottom of the screw now. I can't reach the brig into an eighth of
a mile."

"Try her again, I tell you," roared the enraged captain. "Are you going
to stand chinning there while a hundred thousand dollars slips through
our fingers?"

The captain continued to talk in this way while the howitzer was loaded
and trained for the second shot; but he might as well have saved his
ammunition, for this shrapnel, like the first, did no harm to the brig.
It didn't frighten her company, either, for they set up a derisive yell,
which came faintly to the ears of the privateer's crew.

"Oh, how I'd like to get my hands on that fellow!" shouted Captain
Beardsley. "I'd learn him to insult a Confederate government vessel.
I'd----"

Marcy Gray, who stood holding fast to the halliards, looking aloft and
listening to what Beardsley had to say, saw the lookout, who had
remained at his post all this time, touch the captain on the shoulder
and direct his gaze toward something in the horizon. Marcy looked, too,
and was electrified to see a thick, black smoke floating up among the
clouds. Could it be that there was a cruiser off there bearing down upon
them? He looked at Captain Beardsley again, and came to the conclusion
that there must be something suspicious about the stranger, for the
captain, after gazing at the smoke through his glass, squared around and
backed down from aloft with much more celerity than Marcy ever saw him
exhibit before.

"It is a cruiser," thought the young pilot, when the captain assumed
charge of the deck and ordered the schooner to be put about and headed
toward Crooked Inlet. "She has heard the sound of our guns and is coming
up to see what is the matter."

Marcy couldn't decide whether the captain's pale face and excited,
nervous manner were occasioned by the fears that had been conjured up by
the sudden appearance of that strange vessel in the offing, or by the
rage and disappointment he felt over the loss of the valuable prize he
had so confidently expected to capture. He hauled down the schooner's
flag, packed it away in the chest where it was usually kept, and then
had leisure to take a look at the crew. Could they be the same men who
had so valiantly fired into that unarmed brig a short half hour before?

"It _is_ a cruiser," repeated Marcy, turning to the side to conceal the
look of exultation which he knew the thought brought to his face. "It
can't be anything else, for the whole ship's company are scared out of
their boots. We were so busy with the brig that we never saw her until
she got so close on to us that she is liable to cut us off from the
Inlet. If she comes within range of us Captain Beardsley will find that
there is a heap of difference between shooting and being shot at. I
hope----"

Marcy was about to add that he hoped the on-coming war ship would either
capture or sink the _Osprey_, and so put a stop to her piratical career;
but if she did, what would become of him? If one of those big shells
came crashing into the schooner, it would be as likely to hit him as
anybody else, and if the privateer were cut off from the Inlet and
captured, he would be taken prisoner with the rest of the crew and sent
to some Northern prison. Of course, Marcy could not make the captain of
the war ship believe that he did not ship on the privateer of his own
free will, and that he was strong for the Union; and indeed it would be
dangerous for him to try, for the folks at home would be sure to hear of
it sooner or later, and then what would happen to his mother? As the
young pilot turned these thoughts over in his mind, he came to the
conclusion that he would feel a little safer if he knew that the
schooner would reach the Inlet in advance of the steamer, but he was
obliged to confess that it looked doubtful. She was coming up rapidly,
land was a long way off, and it would be many hours before darkness came
to their aid.

"That rain squall out there is our only salvation," Marcy heard the
captain say to one of the mates. "When it comes up we'll haul our wind
and run for Hatteras. The cruiser will hold straight on her course, and
if the squall lasts long enough we may be able to run her out of
sight."

Although Captain Beardsley was frightened at the prospect of falling
into the hands of those whose flag he had insulted, he did not lose his
head. The plan he had suddenly adopted for eluding the steamer proved
that he could take desperate chances when it was necessary. By hauling
his wind (which in this case meant shaping the schooner's course as near
as possible toward the point from which the wind was blowing), he would
be compelled to pass within a few miles of the steamer, and if the
rain-cloud, under cover of which he hoped to escape, lifted for the
space of one short minute, he was almost certain to be discovered. The
squall came up directly behind the steamer, and in about half an hour
overtook and shut her out from view.

"Now's our time," exclaimed Beardsley. "Flatten in the fore and main
sails and give a strong pull at the headsail sheets. Tierney, go to the
wheel."

Marcy lent a hand, and while the orders were being obeyed was gratified
to hear one of the crew remark that the squall was something more than a
squall; that it was coming to stay, and that they would be lucky if they
saw the end of it by sunrise the next morning. If that proved to be the
case they would have nothing to fear from the steamer. All they would
have to look out for was shipwreck.

Half an hour was all the time that was necessary to prove that the
sailor knew what he was talking about. The wind blew a gale and the rain
fell in torrents. Just before the storm reached them, Captain Beardsley
thought it would be wise to shorten his canvas, but all he took in were
the gaff-topsails and fore-topmast staysail. Shortly afterward it became
necessary to reef the sails that were left, and when that had been done
the captain declared that he wouldn't take in anything else, even if he
knew that the wind would take the sticks out of the schooner by the
roots. He would rather be wrecked than go to prison any day.

Things could not have worked more to Beardsley's satisfaction if he had
had the planning of the storm himself. The privateer's crew never saw
the steamer after the rain and mist shut her out from view; and when the
sun arose the next morning, after the wildest night Marcy Gray ever
experienced on the water, there was not a sail in sight.

"I wish it was safe for us to stand out and try our luck again," said
Captain Beardsley, who had been aloft sweeping the horizon with his
glass. "But the Yankee war ships are getting too thick for comfort."

"Don't you expect to find some of them about Hatteras?" inquired Marcy.

"Of course I do. I believe the one that was chasing us yesterday came
from there, and that that brig we lost held some communication with her
before she sighted us. If she hadn't been warned by somebody, what was
the reason she began dodging the minute she saw us? I hope to slip in
between them, or at least to get under the protection of the guns of the
forts at the Inlet before any of the cruisers can come within range.
Privateering is played out along this coast. As soon as we get into port
I shall tear out the bunks below, reduce my crew, and go to blockade
running."

"But you'll run the same risk of capture that you do now," Marcy
reminded him.

"But I won't be captured with guns aboard of me," said Beardsley, with a
wink that doubtless meant a great deal. "Perhaps you don't know it, but
I gave orders, in case that steamer sighted us again, to throw
everything in the shape of guns and ammunition overboard. Then they
couldn't have proved a thing against us."

"The size of your crew would have laid you open to suspicion," replied
Marcy.

"Yes; but suspicion and proof are two different things," was the
captain's answer. "But I am afraid of them howitzers, all the same, and
am going to get shet of them the minute we get to Newbern. I don't
reckon I can give you a furlong to go home this time, 'cause it won't
take two days to get the schooner ready to take out a load of cotton."

"But you'll not need a pilot any longer," said Marcy, who was very much
disappointed.

"What's the reason I won't? Do you reckon I'm going to run out of
Hatteras in the face of all the war ships that are fooling around here?
Not much. And I'm not going to hug the coast, neither. I'll make Crooked
Inlet my point of departure, like I always have done, and then I'll
stand straight out to sea till I get outside the cruisers' beat. See?
Then I'll shape my course for Nassau. It'll give us a heap of bother and
we'll go miles out of our way; but we'll be safe."

"But suppose we are captured after all your precautions; what then?"

"Well, if we are we'll lose our vessel and be sent to jail; but we'll
not be treated as pirates, don't you see? The Northern folks are awful
mad 'cause our President has issued letters of mark-we and reprisal, and
their papers demand that every one of us who is taken shall be hung to
the yardarm. To tell you the honest truth, that kinder scared me, and
that's one reason why I want to get out of the business of
privateering."

"And you think you will still need a pilot?"

"Can't you see it for yourself from what I have told you?" asked
Beardsley, in reply. "And, Marcy, you'll make more money with less risk
than you do in this business. It ain't to be expected that men will run
the risk of going to jail for regular foremast hands' wages. They want
more money, and it's right that they should have it. Why, them
blockade-runners I told you about paid their hands five hundred dollars
apiece for the run to Nassau and back. What do you think of that?"

"I think it is good wages," replied Marcy. ["If the business was only
safe and honorable," he added, to himself.]

"Of course it is good wages. I don't expect to get a crew for any less;
but, as I said before, I'll do the fair thing by you. If you go home you
will have to enlist--I've heard the folks say that everybody had got to
show his hand one way or the other--and then you would get only twelve
or thirteen dollars a month. Think of that!"

Marcy was right when he told himself that the captain had him fast, and
that there was no release for him as long as the _Osprey_ remained in
commission. It was a gloomy outlook, but the only thing he could do was
to make the best of it.

As soon as the captain thought it safe to do so every inch of the
privateer's canvas was given to the breeze, and she made good headway
toward her destination. That day and the ensuing night passed without
excitement of any sort, and at sunrise the next morning two objects were
in plain sight from the schooner's deck. One was the entrance to
Hatteras Inlet, and the other was a large steamer in the offing. The two
vessels had been in view of each other ever since daylight. They were
both headed for the same point--one making the most desperate efforts to
place herself under cover of the guns of the forts, and the other making
equally desperate efforts to bring the schooner within range of her
bow-chaser before she could get there. It was a close and exciting race,
and the crews of both vessels watched it anxiously. The black smoke
rolled in thick clouds from the steamer's funnels, and the privateer's
topmasts snapped and bent like fishing-rods, while her white-faced
captain paced his quarter-deck, dividing his attention between his
imperilled top-hamper and the pursuing steamer, and rubbing his hands
nervously. At last the climax came. A puff of white smoke arose from the
steamer's bow, and a shell from an old-fashioned smooth-bore thirty-two
pounder dropped into the water about half way between her and the flying
schooner. If that same steamer had had for a bow-chaser the heavy rifled
gun she had a few months later, the result would have been different. As
it was, Captain Beardsley gathered courage, and the anxious look left
his face.

"If that's the best he can do we're all right," said he gleefully. "If
this breeze holds half an hour longer we'll show him our flag."

"Shall we give him an answer from one of the howitzers, sir?" inquired
Tierney.

"Not for your life!" replied Beardsley, quickly. And then he added in a
lower tone, addressing himself to Marcy, who stood near, "That would be
a bright idea, wouldn't it? This breeze may die away any minute, and we
don't want to do anything to make them Yankees madder at us than they be
now. Another thing, we mustn't give 'em anything to remember this
schooner by. We may be caught when we try to run the blockade with our
cargo of cotton, and we don't want anybody to recall the fact that we
once had guns aboard. See?"

It was a long time before Marcy Gray could make up his mind how the
chase was going to end, although he noticed when it first began that
there were two things in the schooner's favor. One was that she was so
far out of range that her pursuer could not cripple her, and the other
was, that the wind that was favorable to her was unfavorable to the
steamer, so that the latter could not use her sails. He also took note
of the fact that Beardsley hugged the shore pretty closely, and this
made it evident that he intended to beach the schooner rather than
permit her to fall into the hands of the Yankees. But he was not driven
to such extremity. The breeze held out, and although the steamer
continued to fire her bow-chaser at intervals, the privateer rounded the
point unharmed; while the pursuer, not caring to trust herself within
range of the rifled guns on shore, veered around and stood out to sea. A
look through his glass showed Beardsley that the half-finished batteries
had been manned in readiness to give the war ship a warm reception if
she had ventured to follow the privateer through the Inlet.

"Marcy, run up the flag so that our friends in the forts can see who we
are!" commanded Beardsley. "The last time we sailed through here we had
a prize following in our wake, and we would have had a more valuable one
to-day if that brig hadn't been warned by them Yankees outside."

The Confederate emblem proved to be as good as a countersign, and
Captain Beardsley was permitted to sail on through the Inlet without
going ashore to give an account of himself. As soon as he was safe
inside the bar he directed his course toward Newbern, which he reached
without any more adventures; but there were no cheers to greet him as
his schooner was pulled into the wharf. Beardsley's agent, who was the
first to spring over the rail, looked very much disgusted.

"Why, Captain, how is this?" were the first words he uttered. "I didn't
expect to see you come back empty handed."

"No more did I expect to come back that way," was the captain's reply.
"But we can't always have luck on our side. There is too many cruisers
out there."

"Did you see any of them?"

"Well, I reckon. We had a race with two of them, and I ain't going
privateering no more."

"Scared out, are you?" said the agent, with some contempt in his tones.
"Well, it may interest you to know that while you were fooling around
out there, doing nothing, we have fought the battle that will bring us
our independence."

"_You_ did?" exclaimed Beardsley, who knew that the agent thought he had
played the part of a coward in making such haste to get back to port.
"You didn't have nary hand in it. You stay around home, yelling for the
Confederacy, and flinging your slurs at we uns who have been under the
fire of a Yankee war ship, but you ain't got the pluck to go into the
service yourself. We didn't see but one merchantman while we was gone
and she was a brig; and as she carried three times the canvas we did she
had the heels of us, and besides she wouldn't let us come within range.
It was all we wanted to do to get into Hatteras, on account of the
cruiser that fired on us. What battle was it that gained us our
independence?"

"Bull Run," replied the agent.

"Where's that?"

"Somewhere up in Virginia. We had thirty-five thousand men and the
Yankees more than twice as many; but we threw them into a panic and run
them clear into Washington. I expect our army has got the city by this
time."

"I didn't think the Yankees would fight," said the captain reflectively.
"Then the war is just as good as over."

"That's what the Richmond papers say."

"And it won't be no use for me to go blockade running?"

"Oh, yes it will. Peace hasn't been declared yet, and you had better
make money at something while you can. After all, I don't know that I
blame you for coming back. We've lost two blockade-runners and one
privateer since you went out."

"There, now"; exclaimed Beardsley. "And I'd have lost my own vessel if I
hadn't had the best of luck. What you sneering at me for?"

"Well, you see you were safe outside, and I was sure you would come back
with a prize. I was disappointed when I saw you coming up the river
alone."

"Not more disappointed than I was myself," answered the captain. "That
brig was worth a power of money, and I might have been chasing her yet
if that man-of-war hadn't hove in sight."

This was all the conversation Marcy overheard between Beardsley and his
agent, for the two drew off on one side and talked earnestly in tones so
low that he could not catch a word they said. It was plain that they
came to an understanding on some point, for shortly afterward they went
into the cabin, and Marcy was commanded to station himself at the head
of the companion ladder and pass the word for the crew as fast as their
names were called. He could see that the schooner's books and papers had
been placed upon the cabin table, and that led him to believe that the
reduction of the crew was to begin immediately. When the first man who
was sent below came on deck again with his wages in his hand, Marcy
whispered:

"What did the captain say when he paid you off B+"

"He didn't say he was gallied," replied the sailor, with a knowing look,
"but I'll bet he is. The booming of that war ship's guns was too much
for his nerves, and he's going to quit pirating and go to blockade
running. I don't see but that one is about as dangerous as the other."
One by one the members of the crew were sent into the cabin, and as fast
as they received their money and their discharges they bundled up their
clothes and bedding and went ashore. At last there were only six
foremast hands left, including Marcy Gray, and these were summoned into
the cabin in a body to listen to what Captain Beardsley had to propose
to them. He began with the statement that privateering was played out
along that coast, because numerous cruisers were making it their
business to watch the inlets and warn passing vessels to look out for
themselves. It was no use trying to catch big ships that would not let
him come within range, and so he had decided to put his howitzers
ashore, tear out the berths and gun decks fore and aft, and turn the
_Osprey_ into a freighter. He would change her name, too, give her
another coat of paint, and take the figures off her sails, so that she
could not be recognized from the description the _Hollins's_ men would
give of her when they went North.

"I have kept you men because you are the best in the crew," said
Beardsley in conclusion, "and of course I want none but good men and
true aboard of me; but you needn't stay if you don't want to. I want you
to understand that blockade running is a dangerous business, and that we
may be captured as others have been; but if you will stand by me, I'll
give you five hundred dollars apiece for the run--one hundred to spend
in Nassau, and the balance when you help me bring the schooner safe back
to Newbern. What do you say?"

The men had evidently been expecting something of this sort, for without
a moment's hesitation Tierney, speaking for his companions, replied that
the captain's liberal offer was accepted, and they would do all that men
could do to make the _Osprey's_ voyages profitable. Marcy said nothing,
for Beardsley had already given him to understand that he was to be one
of the blockade-runner's crew. He was the only native American among the
foremast hands, and the only one who could sign his name to the shipping
articles, the others being obliged to make their marks. When this had
been done the men returned to the deck, and the agent went ashore to
make arrangements for landing the guns, to hunt up a gang of ship
carpenters, and find a cotton-factor who was willing to take his chances
on making or losing a fortune. He worked to such good purpose that in
less than an hour two parties of men were busy on the schooner--one with
the howitzers and the other with the bunks below--and a broker was
making a contract with Beardsley for taking out a cargo of cotton. When
the broker had gone ashore Beardsley beckoned Marcy to follow him into
the cabin.

"The schooner owes you seventeen hundred dollars and better," said he,
as he closed the sliding door and pointed to a chair. "It's in the bank
ashore, and you can have it whenever you want it. Would you like to take
out a venture?"

It was right on the point of Marcy's tongue to reply that he would be
glad to do it; but he checked himself in time, for the thought occurred
to him that perhaps this was another attempt on the part of Captain
Beardsley to find out something about the state of his mother's
finances. So he looked down at the carpet and said nothing.

"There's money in it," continued Beardsley. "Suppose you take out two
bales of cotton, sell it in Nassau for three times what it was worth a
few months ago, and invest the proceeds in quinine; why, you'll make
five hundred percent. Of course I can't grant all the hands the same
privilege, so I will make the bargain for you through my agent, and
Tierney and the rest needn't know a thing about. What do you say?"

"I don't think I had better risk it," answered Marcy.

"What for?" asked Beardsley.

"Well, the money I've got I'm sure of, am I not?"

"Course you are. Didn't I say you could have it any minute you had a
mind to call for it?"

"You did; but suppose I should put it into cotton, as you suggest, and
the _Osprey_ should fall into the hands of one of those war ships
outside. There'd be all my money gone to the dogs, or, what amounts to
the same thing, into the hands of the Yankees. I may want to use that
money before the war is over."

"But didn't you hear the agent say that we ain't going to have any war?
We've licked 'em before they could take their coats off."

"But perhaps they'll not stay whipped. My teachers at the academy were
pretty well posted, and I heard some of them say that a war is surely
coming, and in the end the Southern States will wish they had never
seceded."

"Well, them teachers of yourn was the biggest fules I ever heard tell
of," exclaimed Beardsley, settling back in his chair and slamming a
paper-weight down upon the table. "Why, don't I tell you that we've got
'em licked already? More'n that, I don't mean to fall into the hands of
them cruisers outside. I tell you that you'll miss it if you don't take
out a venture. And as for your mother needing them seventeen hundred
dollars to buy grub and the like, you can't pull the wool over my eyes
in no such way as that. She's got money by the bushel, and I know it to
be a fact."

"Then you know more than I do," replied Marcy, his eyes never dropping
for an instant under the searching gaze the captain fixed upon him.
"Now, I would like to ask you one question: You have money enough of
your own to load this vessel, have you not?"

"Why, of course I--that's neither here nor there," replied Beardsley,
who was not sharp enough to keep out of the trap that Marcy had placed
for him. "What of it?"

"I know it to be a fact that you could load the schooner with cotton
purchased with your own money if you felt like it," answered the young
pilot, "but you don't mean to do it. You would rather carry cotton
belonging to somebody else, and that is all the proof I want that you
are afraid of the Yankees. If you want to do the fair thing by me, why
do you advise me to put my money into a venture, when you are afraid to
put in a dollar for yourself?"

"Why, man alive," Beardsley almost shouted, "don't I risk my schooner?
Every nigger I've got was paid for with money she made for me by
carrying cigars and such like between Havana and Baltimore."

"That's what I thought," said Marcy, to himself. "And you didn't pay a
cent of duty on those cigars, either."

"I do my share by risking my schooner," continued the captain. "But I
want somebody to make something besides myself, and if you don't want to
risk your money, I reckon I'll give the mates a chance. That's all."

"What in the name of sense did I go and speak to him about them cigars
for?" he added, mentally, as the pilot ascended the ladder that led to
the deck. "I think myself that there's a war coming, and if we get
licked I must either make a fast friend of that boy or get rid of him;
for if he tells on me I'll get into trouble sure."

It looked now as though Marcy might some day have it in his power to
make things very unpleasant for Captain Beardsley.




                              CHAPTER V.

                          A CAT WITHOUT CLAWS.

"I really believe I've got a hold on the old rascal at last," said Marcy
to himself, as he leaned against the rail and watched the men, who,
under direction of the mates, were hard at work getting the howitzers
ashore. "From this time on he had better be careful how he treats my
mother, for he may fall into the hands of the Yankees some day; and if
that ever happens, I will take pains to see that he doesn't get back to
Nashville in a hurry. I'll go any lengths to get a letter to the
Secretary of the Treasury, telling him just who and what Beardsley is,
and then perhaps he will stand a chance of being tried for something
besides piracy and blockade-running."

Marcy's first care was to write to his mother. While omitting no item of
news, he took pains to word the letter so cautiously that it could not
be used against him in case some of his secret enemies in and around
Nashville, the postmaster and Colonel Shelby, for instance, took it into
their heads to open and read it instead of sending it to its address.
They had showed him that they were quite mean enough to do it. Then he
went ashore to mail the letter and take notes, and was not long in
making up his mind that he was not the only one who thought there was
going to be a war. Although the Newbern people were very jubilant over
the great victory at Bull Run, they did not act as though they thought
that that was the last battle they would have to fight before their
independence would be acknowledged, for Marcy saw infantry companies
marching and drilling in almost every street through which he passed,
and every other man and boy he met was dressed in uniform. As he drew
near to the post-office he ran against a couple of young soldiers about
his own age, or, to be more exact, they ran against him; for they were
coming along with their arms locked, talking so loudly that they could
have been heard on the opposite side of the street, and when the
_Osprey's_ pilot turned out to let them pass, they tried to crowd him
off into the gutter. But Marcy, beside being a sturdy fellow, knew how
to stand up for his rights. He braced his foot firmly against the
curbstone and met the shock of the collision so vigorously that those
who would have sent him headlong into the street were sent backward
themselves, and came very near going head first down the stairs that led
into a basement restaurant.

"Don't you think I ought to have a little of this sidewalk?" he asked
good-naturedly, as the two straightened up and faced him with clenched
hands and flashing eyes.

"Then put on a uniform and you can have as much of it as you want," said
one, in reply.

"How long have you had those good clothes of yours?" inquired Marcy.
"Were they in the fight at Bull Run?"

"Of course not. We only enlisted a week ago, but we show our good will
and you don't."

"Then you have never smelled powder or heard the noise of the enemy's
guns?"

"It isn't likely, for there's been no fighting around here," said the
same speaker, who began to wonder if he and his companions hadn't made a
mistake.

"Then go and get some experience before you take it upon yourselves to
shove a veteran into the ditch," said Marcy loftily. "I've been in the
service ever since President Davis issued his call for privateers.
You've heard of the _Osprey_, haven't you? Well, I belong to her."

"Is that so?" exclaimed the other, extending his hand, which the pilot
was prompt to accept. "I am sorry we insulted you and beg your pardon
for it. But you ought to wear something to show who you are, for the
folks around here don't think much of citizens unless they have declared
their intention of enlisting as soon as they can get their affairs in
shape."

"I knew why you bumped up against me, and that was the reason I didn't
get mad at it," answered Marcy. "You don't seem to have much to do; and
if you will walk up to the post-office with me, I'll show you over the
_Osprey_, if you would like to take a look at her. But we'll have to be
in a hurry if we want to see her with the guns aboard, for she is being
changed into a blockade-runner."

"Ah! That's the money-making business," said one of the recruits with
enthusiasm. "I wish I knew something about boats, so that I could go
into it myself. What wages do you get?"

"Five hundred dollars for the run to Nassau and back."

The eyes of Marcy's new friends grew to twice their usual size. They
looked hard at him to see if he was really in earnest, and then whistled
in concert.

"It's worth it," continued Marcy, "and I don't believe you could get men
to go into it for less. From the time we leave the protection of the
forts at Hatteras to the time we get back, we shall be in constant fear
of capture. We know something of the dangers of the business, for we had
two narrow escapes during our last cruise."

Of course the recruits wanted to know all about it, and as they faced
around and walked with him, Marcy gave them a short history of what the
schooner had done since she went into commission. When he told how
neatly that Yankee brig had slipped through Captain Beardsley's fingers,
his companions looked at him in surprise.

"What a pity," said one. "And yet you talk as if you were glad of it."

"I talk as if it was a brave and skilful act, and so it was," answered
Marcy. "You would say the same if you had been there and seen it done."

"No, I wouldn't. The Yankees are not brave and skilful, and they can't
do anything to make me think they are. How will they feel when they see
our President sitting in the White House, dictating terms of peace to
them? I hope our company will be there to witness the ceremony."

This was a point Marcy did not care to discuss with the two recruits,
for fear he might say something to arouse in their minds a suspicion
that he was not intensely loyal to the Confederacy, even if he did sail
under its flag; so he inquired if there were anything else but drilling
and marching going on in Newbern.

"Not much else in the city," replied one of the young soldiers. "But
there's a heap going on about five miles below. There's a corps of
engineers down there laying out a system of fortifications which are to
be a mile long. It will take eight or nine thousand men to garrison
them, and they will be defended by thirty-one guns."

"But I don't see any sense in it," said the other, who seemed to think
he had learned considerable of the art of war since he put on his gray
jacket. "A Yankee army will never come so far south as Newbern, and
their gunboats can't get past the forts at Hatteras."

But, all the same, the Confederate authorities thought the works ought
to be pushed to completion, and so they were; but they did not amount to
much, for Burnside's troops captured them after a four hours' fight,
with the loss of only ninety-one men killed, the garrison retreating to
Newbern and taking the cars for Goldsborough. When Marcy heard of it a
few months later, he wondered if his new acquaintances were in the
fight, and if they still held to the opinion that the Yankees were not
brave.

After leaving the post-office they spent an hour on board the _Osprey_
and parted at last well pleased with the result of their meeting, and
fully satisfied in their own minds that the Yankees had been so badly
whipped at Bull Run that they would never dare face the Confederate
soldiers again. At least the two recruits were satisfied of it; but
Marcy thought he knew better.

On the morning of the next day but one, a tug came alongside and towed
the schooner up to a warehouse, where there was a load of cotton waiting
for her; and for want of something better to do, Marcy hunted up a
cotton-hook and assisted in rolling the heavy bales on board. The little
vessel was so changed in appearance that a landsman would hardly have
recognized her. The treacherous figure "9," which Beardsley had caused
to be painted on her sails, in the hope that merchant vessels would take
her for a harmless pilot-boat, was not to be seen; all the black paint
about her, from the heel of her bowsprit to the crosstrees, had given
place to a bluish-white; and on both sides of her bow and over her cabin
door the name _Hattie_ appeared in large gilt letters.

"Now, when them _Hollins_ men get home and try to give the war ships a
description of the privateer that captured them, they will be mighty apt
to shoot wide of the mark, won't they?" said Captain Beardsley, who was
much pleased with the work the painters had done under his instructions.
"There ain't the first thing aboard of us to show that we used to be
engaged in the privateering business. Oh, I'm a sharp one, and it takes
something besides a Yankee to get the start of me."

Beardsley was so impatient to get to sea, and so very anxious to handle
the fortune he was sure he was going to make by his first attempt at
blockade running, that he employed all the men that could be worked to
advantage, and took on board every bale he could possibly find room for.
The deck load was so large that it threatened to interfere with the
handling of the sails! and when a tug pulled the schooner's head around
till it pointed down the river, she set so low in the water that she
could not show her usual speed, even with the tide in her favor, and
Tierney said in Marcy's hearing that he believed he could hoist a sail
in a washing-tub and reach Nassau before the schooner could leave the
sand dunes of Hatteras out of sight. But the captain did not seem to
think he had made any mistake in loading his vessel, although he did
show some anxiety for her safety; for when she reached Crooked Inlet he
walked aft and took charge of the wheel himself, and without saying one
word to the young fellow whom he called his pilot, until he saw the
latter looking at him as if he wanted to know what Beardsley meant by
such work.

"There, now," said the captain, by way of explanation, "I thought you
was below; I did for a fact. And so I said to myself that I wouldn't
bother you, but would try and take her through without your help, just
to see if I could do it, you know. Supposing you was the only one aboard
who knew the channel, and something should happen to you, and I should
want to come through here in a hurry to get out of the way of a war ship
that was close in my wake; wouldn't I be in a pretty fix? Now stand by,
so't you can give me a word in case I don't hold her just right."

"You old hypocrite," thought Marcy. "If that was the first lie you ever
told it would choke you. So he thinks something is going to happen to
me, does he? Now what does he mean by that?"

Captain Beardsley had done nothing more than Marcy expected him to do,
but he did not have a word of fault to find with it, as a regular pilot
would have done when he saw his business taken out of his hands in so
unceremonious a fashion. If the skipper was willing to pay him five
hundred dollars for doing nothing, the boy didn't think he ought to
complain. He took his stand close by the captain's side, but he did not
touch the wheel, nor did he so much as look at the black and red buoys
that marked the channel. He was turning these words over in his mind:
"Suppose something should happen to you!" Was he to understand that
Beardsley had made up his mind to get rid of him in some way?

"If that is what he wants, why didn't he pay me off while we were in
Newbern?" was the question Marcy asked himself. "But for some reason or
other it doesn't suit him to have me at home with mother; and that makes
me think that there's going to be an attempt made to steal the money she
has hidden in the cellar wall. Oh, how I wish Jack was at home."

When the schooner was clear of the Inlet, Beardsley gave the boy a wink
as if to say, "I did take her through, didn't I?" held a short
consultation with the mates, during which the course was determined
upon, then mounted to the cross trees with his glass in his hand; and
after sweeping it around the horizon, gave the cheering information to
those below that there was nothing in sight. But there was something in
sight a few hours later--something that put Beardsley in such a rage
that he did not get over it for a day or two. It was a schooner a little
larger than his own, and she was standing directly across the _Hattie's_
bows. She did not show any disposition to "dodge" as the brig had done,
but held straight on her course, and this made Captain Beardsley suspect
that there might be a cruiser following in her wake to see that she did
not get into trouble. But if there was, his glass failed to reveal the
fact, and this suggested an idea to him. When the stranger's topsails
could be seen from the _Hattie's_ deck he shouted down to his mate:

"Say, Morgan, I'll tell you what's the matter with that fellow. He don't
know that there's such things as privateers afloat, and he ain't seen
nary cruiser to warn him. That's why he don't sheer off."

"I reckon you're right, cap'n," replied the mate. "It's plain that he
ain't afraid of us."

"Well, if I am right," continued Beardsley, "it proves that the war
ships off Hatteras have went off somewheres, and that the coast below is
all clear; don't you think so? What do you say if we make a straight run
for our port? We'll save more than a week by it."

"I'm agreeable," answered the mate, who, upon receiving a nod from the
captain, gave the necessary orders, and in a few minutes the _Hattie_
was close-hauled and running in such a direction that if the two vessels
held on their way, they would pass almost within hailing distance of
each other. Of course the captain of the stranger must have witnessed
this manoeuvre, but he did not seem to be surprised or troubled by it;
for he kept straight on and in another hour dashed by within less than a
quarter of a mile of Captain Beardsley, who lifted his hat and waved it
to a small party of men, her officers probably, who were standing on her
quarter deck. In response to the salutation the Stars and Stripes were
hoisted at her peak.

"If she had done that three weeks ago wouldn't I have brought that flag
down with a jerk?" exclaimed Beardsley angrily. "Did anybody ever hear
of such luck? Why didn't she show up when we had them howitzers aboard?
They don't know what to make of us, for I can see two fellows with
glasses pointed at us all the time. Run up that Yankee flag, Marcy."

The latter was prompt to obey the order, and he was quite willing to do
it, since it was not in Beardsley's power to do any harm to the handsome
stranger. After being allowed to float for a few minutes the two flags
were hauled down and stowed away in their respective chests, and the
little vessels parted company without either one knowing who the other
was. But there was an angry lot of men on board the _Hattie._ Beardsley
showed that he was one of them by the hard words he used when he came
down from aloft and sent a lookout up to take his place, and Tierney,
after shaking his fist at the Yankee, shut one eye, glanced along the
rail with the other, as he had glanced through the sights of the
howitzer he once commanded, and then jerked back his right hand as if he
were pulling a lock-string. Marcy Gray was the only one aboard who
carried a light heart.

After the schooner's course was changed there was a good deal of
suppressed excitement among the crew, for Captain Beardsley was about to
take what some of them thought to be a desperate risk. Probably there
were no cruisers off Hatteras when that merchant vessel passed, but that
was all of fifteen or twenty hours ago, and they had had plenty of time
to get back to their stations. So a bright lookout was kept by all
hands, and Beardsley or one of the mates went aloft every few minutes to
take a peep through the glass. Marcy thought there was good cause for
watchfulness and anxiety. In the first place, the Bahama Islands, of
which Nassau, in the Island of New Providence, was the principal port,
lay off the coast of Florida, and about five hundred miles southeast of
Charleston. They must have been at least twice as far from Crooked
Inlet, so that Captain Beardsley, by selecting Newbern as his home port,
ran twice the risk of falling into the hands of the Federal cruisers
that he would if he had decided to run his contraband cargo into
Savannah or Charleston.

"It seems to me that the old man ought to have learned wisdom after
living for so many years in defiance of the law," thought Marcy, when it
came his turn to go aloft and relieve the lookout. "Of course a smuggler
has to take his chances with the revenue cutters he is liable to meet
along the coast, as well as with the Custom House authorities, and I
should think that constant fear of capture would have made him sly and
cautious; but it hasn't."--"Nothing in sight, sir," he said, in answer
to an inquiry from the officer who had charge of the deck.

And this was the report that was sent down by every lookout who went
aloft during the next four days; and what a time of excitement and
suspense that was for Marcy Gray and all the rest of the _Hattie's_
crew. Perhaps there was not so much danger of being run down at night by
some heavy vessel as there would have been a few months before, but
Marcy's nerves thrilled with apprehension when he stood holding fast to
the rail during the lonely mid-watch, and the schooner, with the spray
dashing wildly about her bows and everything drawing, was running before
a strong wind through darkness so black that her flying-jib-boom could
not be seen, and there was no light on board except the one in the
binnacle.

"I know it's dangerous and I don't like it any better than you do,"
Beardsley said to him one night. "But think of the money there is in it,
and what a fule you were for not taking out a venture when I gave you
the chance. I bought four bales apiece for the mates, and they will
pocket the money that you might have had just as well as not."

"But I want to use my seventeen hundred dollars," replied Marcy; and so
he did. He still clung to the hope that he might some day have an
opportunity to return it to the master of the _Hollins_, and that was
the reason he was unwilling to run the risk of losing it.

"Go and tell that to the marines," said Captain Beardsley impatiently.
"They'll believe anything, but I won't. You don't need it; your folks
don't, and I know it. Keep a bright lookout for lights, hold a stiff
upper lip, and I will take you safely through."

And so he did. Not only were the Federal war ships accommodating enough
to keep out of the way, but the elements were in good humor also. The
schooner had a fair wind during the whole of her perilous journey, and
in due time it wafted her into the port of Nassau. Although Marcy Gray
had never been there before, he had heard and read of New Providence as
a barren rock, with scarcely soil enough to produce a few pineapples and
oranges, and of Nassau as a place of no consequence whatever so far as
commerce was concerned. It boasted a small sponge trade, exported some
green turtles and conch-shells, and was the home of a few fisherman and
wreckers; this was all Marcy thought there was of Nassau, and
consequently his surprise was great when he found himself looking out
upon the wharves of a thriving, bustling little town. The slave-holders'
rebellion, "which brought woe and wretchedness to so many of our States,
was the wind that blew prosperity to Nassau." When President Lincoln's
proclamation, announcing the blockade of all the Confederate ports was
issued, Nassau took on an air of business and importance, and at once
became the favorite resort of vessels engaged in contraband trade. There
were Northern men there too, and Northern vessels as well; for, to quote
from the historian, "The Yankee, in obedience to his instincts of
traffic, scented the prey from afar, and went there to turn an honest
penny by assisting the Confederates to run the blockade." The supplies
which the Confederates had always purchased in the North, and of which
they already began to stand in need, were shipped from Europe in neutral
vessels; and being consigned to a neutral port (for Nassau belonged to
England), they were in no danger of being captured by our war ships
during the long voyage across the Atlantic. It was when these supplies
were taken from the wharves and placed in the holds of vessels like the
_Hattie_ that the trouble began, and men like Captain Beardsley ran all
the risk and reaped the lion's share of the profits. Almost the first
thing that drew Marcy's attention was the sight of a Union and
Confederate flag floating within a few rods of each other.

"What's the meaning of that?" he asked of Beardsley, as soon as he found
opportunity to speak to him. "We don't own this town, do we?"

"No; but we've got a Consulate here," was the reply. "I don't know's I
understand just what that means, but it's some sort of an officer that
our government has sent here to look out for our interests. If a man
wants to go from here to our country, he must go to that Consulate and
get a pass before any blockade-runner will take him. Now don't you wish
you had took my advice and brought out a venture?"

"It's too late to think of that now," answered Marcy. "And your own
profits are not safe yet. It must be all of a thousand miles from here
to Newbern, and perhaps we'll not have as good luck going as we did
coming. I am to have a hundred dollars to spend here, am I not?"

"Course. That's what I promised before you and the rest signed articles.
I'll give it to you the minute this cotton is got ashore and paid for.
What you going to do with it?"

"I thought I would invest it in medicine."

"Your head's level. You couldn't make bigger money on anything else."

"And as it is my own money and the captain of the _Hollins_ has no
interest in it, I shall feel quite at liberty to spend it as I choose,"
soliloquized Marcy, as the captain turned away to meet the
representative of the English house to which his cargo of cotton was
consigned. "Besides, I must keep up appearances, or I'll get into
trouble."

"Turn to, all hands, and get off the hatches," shouted one of the mates.
"Lively now, for the sooner we start back the sooner we'll get there."

Marcy did not know whether or not he was included in this order
addressed to "all hands," but as the officer looked hard at him he
concluded he was. At any rate he was willing to work, if for no other
purpose than to keep him from thinking. Somehow he did not like to have
his mind dwell upon the homeward run.




                              CHAPTER VI.

                         RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.

The gang of 'longshoremen, which was quickly sent on board the _Hattie_
by the Englishman to whom we referred in the last chapter, worked to
such good purpose that in just forty-eight hours from the time her lines
were made fast to the wharf, the blockade-runner was ready for her
return trip. Meanwhile Marcy Gray and the rest of the crew had little to
do but roam about the town, spending their money and mingling with the
citizens, the most of whom were as good Confederates as could have been
found anywhere in the Southern States. Marcy afterward told his mother
that if there were any Union people on the island they lived in the
American Consulate, from whose roof floated the Stars and Stripes. Marcy
was both astonished and shocked to find that nearly every one with whom
he conversed believed that the Union was already a thing of the past,
and that the rebellious States never could be whipped. One day he spoke
to Beardsley about it, while the latter was pacing his quarter-deck
smoking his after-dinner cigar.

"If those English sailors I was talking with a little while ago are so
very anxious to see the Union destroyed, I don't see why they don't ship
under the Confederate flag," said he. "But what has England got against
the United States, anyway?"

"Man alive, she's got everything against 'em," replied the captain, in a
surprised tone. "Didn't they lick old England twice, and ain't the
Yankee flag the only one to which a British army ever surrendered?
You're mighty right. She'd be glad to see the old Union busted into a
million pieces; but she's too big a coward to come out and help us open
and above board, and so she's helping on the sly. I wish the Yankees
would do something to madden her, but they're too sharp. They have give
up the _Herald_--the brig I was telling you about that sailed from
Wilmington just before you came back from your furlong. She was a
Britisher, yon know, and a warship took her prisoner; but the courts
allowed that Wilmington wasn't blockaded at all, except on paper, and
ordered her to be released. I only wish the Yankees had had the pluck to
hold fast to her."

Marcy's thoughts had often reverted to the capture of the brig _Herald_
and to Captain Beardsley's expressed wish that the act might lead to an
open rupture between the United States and England, and he was glad to
learn that there was to be no trouble on that score. But England could
not long keep her meddlesome fingers out of our pie. She did all she
dared to aid the Confederacy, and when the war was ended, had the fun of
handing over a good many millions of dollars to pay for the American
vessels that British built and British armed steamers had destroyed upon
the high seas.

"I saw you bring aboard some little bundles a while ago," continued
Beardsley. "What was in 'em?"

"One of them contained two woolen dresses I bought for mother, and in
the others there was nothing but medicine," said Marcy. "Woolen goods
will be worth money by and by."

"Oh, yes; they'll run up a little. Things always do in war times. The
money them medicines cost, you will be able to turn over about three
times when we get back to Newbern. You'll clear about three hundred
dollars, when you might just as well have made five thousand, if you'd
took my advice and put in your seventeen hundred, as I wanted you to
do."

Marcy made no reply, for he had grown weary of telling the captain that
he intended to use that money for another purpose.

During the two days they remained in port two large steamers came in,
and on the way out they passed as many more, both of which showed the
English colors when Marcy, in obedience to Beardsley's orders, ran the
Confederate emblem up to the _Hattie's_ peak.

"Everything that's aboard them ships is meant for us," said Captain
Beardsley. "I know it, because there never was no such steamers sailing
into this port before the war. Them fellows over the water are sending
in goods faster'n we can take 'em out. Go aloft, Marcy, and holler the
minute you see anything that looks like a sail or a smoke."

When the pilot had been discharged and the schooner filled away for
home, her crew settled down to business again, and every man became
alert and watchful. Those dreadful night runs on the way down Marcy
always thought of with a shiver, and now he had to go through with them
again; and one would surely have ended his career as a blockade-runner,
for a while at least, had it not been for the credulity or stupidity of
a Union naval captain. This particular night, for a wonder, was clear;
the stars shone brightly, and Marcy Gray, who sat on the cross trees
with the night-glass in his hand, had been instructed to use extra
vigilance. There was a heavy ground swell on, showing that there had
recently been a blow somewhere, and the schooner had just breeze enough
to give her steerage way, with nothing to spare. Marcy was thinking of
home, and wondering how much longer it would be necessary for him to
lead this double life, when he saw something that called him back to
earth again. He took a short look at it through his glass, and then
said, in tones just loud enough to reach the ears of those below:

"On deck, there."

"Ay, ay!" came the answer. "What's to do?"

"Lights straight ahead, sir."

"Throw a tarpaulin over that binnacle," commanded Beardsley; and a
moment later Marcy saw him coming up. He gave the glass into his hands
and moved aside so that the captain could find a place to stand on the
crosstrees. Either the latter's eyes were sharper than Marcy's, or else
he took time to make a more critical examination of the approaching
vessel, for presently he hailed the deck in low but excited tones.

"I'm afraid we're in for it, Morgan," said he. "I do for a fact. Tumble
up here and see what you think of her. I can make out that she is a
heavy steamer," he added, as Marcy moved to the other side of the mast,
and the mate came up and stood beside the captain, "and if she can't
make us out, too, every soul aboard of her must be blind. Our white
canvas must show a long ways in this bright starlight. What is she?"

"I give it up," replied the mate.

"She is coming straight for us, ain't she?"

"Looks like it. Suppose you change the course a few points and then we
can tell for a certainty."

Captain Beardsley thought this a suggestion worth acting upon. He sent
down the necessary orders to the second mate, who had been left in
charge of the deck, and in a few minutes the schooner was standing off
on the other tack, and rolling fearfully as she took the ground swell
almost broadside on. Then there came an interval of anxiety and
suspense, during which Marcy Gray strained his eyes until he saw a dozen
lights dancing before them instead of two, as there ought to have been,
and at last Captain Beardsley's worst fears were confirmed. The relative
position of the red and green lights ahead slowly changed until they
were almost in line with each other, and Marcy was sailor enough to know
what that meant. The steamer had caught sight of the _Hattie_, was
keeping watch of her, and had altered her course to intercept her. Marcy
began to tremble.

"I know how a prison looks when viewed from the outside," he said to
himself. "And unless something turns up in our favor, it will not be
many days before I shall know how one looks on the inside."

It was plain that his two companions were troubled by the same gloomy
thoughts, for he heard Beardsley say, in a husky voice:

"She ain't holding a course for nowhere, neither for the Indies nor the
Cape; she shifted her wheel when we did, and that proves that she's a
Yankee cruiser and nothing else. See any signs of a freshening
anywhere?"

"Nary freshening," replied the mate, with a hasty glance around the
horizon. "There ain't a cloud as big as your fist in sight."

Of course Beardsley used some heavy words--he always did when things did
not go to suit him--and then he said, as if he were almost on the point
of crying with vexation:

"It's too bad for them cowardly Yankees to come pirating around here
just at this time when we've got a big fortune in our hands. Them goods
we've got below is worth a cool hundred thousand dollars in Newbern, if
they're worth anything, and my commission will be somewhere in the
neighborhood of twenty-five per cent.; dog-gone it all. Can't we do
nothing to give her the slip? You ain't fitten to be a mate if you can't
give a word of advice in a case like this."

"And if I wanted to be sassy I might say that you ain't fit to command a
ship if you can't get her out of trouble when you get her into it. There
can't no advice be given that I can see, unless it be to chuck the cargo
over the side. I reckon that would be my way if I was master of the
_Hattie._

"But what good would that do?" exclaimed Beardsley. "Where are my
dockyments to prove that I am an honest trader? And even if I had some,
and the cargo was safe out of the hold and sunk to the bottom, I
couldn't say that I am in ballast, because I ain't got a pound of any
sort of ballast to show. Oh, I tell you we're gone coons, Morgan. Do the
Yankees put striped clothes on their prisoners when they shove 'em into
jail, I wonder?"

The mate, who had come to the wise conclusion that the only thing he
could do was to make the best of the situation, did not answer the
captain's last question. All he said was:

"If you dump the cargo overboard the Yankees won't get it!"

"But they'll get my schooner, won't they?" Beardsley almost shouted.
"And do you reckon that I'm going to give them Newbern fellows the
satisfaction of knowing that I saved their goods by sending them to the
bottom? Not by a great sight. If that cruiser gets my property she'll
get their'n, too. I don't reckon we'd have time to clear the hold
anyway."

Marcy Gray had thought so all along. The lights were coming up at a hand
gallop, and already they were much nearer than they seemed to be, for
the shape of the steamer could be made out by the unaided eye. When
Beardsley ceased speaking, the sound of a gong was clearly heard, and a
minute later the steamer blew her whistle.

"What did I tell you, Morgan?" whined the captain. "She's slowing up,
and that whistle means for us to show lights. The next thing we shall
see will be a small boat coming off. I hope the swell'll turn it upside
down and drown every mother's son of her crew that--On deck, there," he
shouted, in great consternation. "Get out lights, and be quick about it.
She'll be on top of us directly."

"She can see us as well without lights as she can with 'em," growled the
mate, as he backed down slowly from the crosstrees. "I don't care if she
cuts us down. I'd about as soon go to the bottom as to be shut up in a
Yankee prison."

Marcy Gray was almost as badly frightened as Beardsley seemed to be. The
steamer was dangerously near, and her behavior and the schooner's proved
the truth of what he had read somewhere, that "two vessels on the ocean
seemed to exercise a magnetic influence upon each other, so often do
collisions occur when it looks as though there might be room for all the
navies of the world to pass in review." So it was now. The two vessels
drifted toward each other, broadside on, and the breeze was so light
that the _Hattie_ was almost helpless; but the stranger was well
handled; her huge paddle wheels, which up to this moment had hung
motionless in the water, began to turn backward, and presently Marcy let
go his desperate clutch upon the stay to which he was clinging, and drew
a long breath of relief. Whatever else the cruiser might do to the
_Hattie_ she did not mean to send her to the bottom.

"Schooner ahoy!" came the hail.

"On board the steamer," answered Captain Beardsley, who had been allowed
a little leisure in which to recover his wits and courage.

"What schooner is that?"

"The _Hattie_ of New York," shouted Beardsley. "Homeward bound from
Havana with a cargo of sugar. Who are you?"

"The United States supply steamer _Adelaide._ What are you doing a
hundred miles eastward of your course, and showing no lights?" asked the
voice; and Marcy fully expected that the next words would be, "I'll send
a boat aboard of you."

"I'm afraid of privateers," was Beardsley's response. "I heered there
was some afloat, and I can't afford to fall in with any of 'em, kase
everything I've got on 'arth is this schooner. If I lose her I'm
teetotally ruined."

"Well, then, why don't you hold in toward Hatteras, where you will be
safe? There's a big fleet in there, and in a few days there'll be
more."

"You don't tell me! Much obleeged for the information! I will put that
way as fast as this breeze will take me. Seen anything suspicious? No?
Then good-by and farewell."

Beardsley shouted out some orders, the schooner filled away so as to
pass under the steamer's stern, and to Marcy's unbounded astonishment
she was permitted to go in peace. The stranger's gong sounded again, and
she also went on her way. There was scarcely a word spoken above a
whisper until her lights had disappeared; then the schooner's own
lanterns were hauled down, her head was turned to the point of the
compass toward which it had been directed when the steamer was first
discovered, and Captain Beardsley was himself again.

"By gum!" said he, striding up and down the deck, pausing now and then
to go through the undignified performance of shipping his mates on the
back.  "_By_ gum, I done it, didn't I! What sort of a Yankee do you
reckon I'd make, Marcy? I talked just like one--through the nose, you
know. Pretty good acting; don't you think so?"

"It was good enough to save the schooner," replied Marcy.

"And that was what I meant to do if I could. I wouldn't have give a
dollar for my chances of getting shet of that steamer till she began to
back away to keep from running us down, and then something told me that
I'd be all right if I put a bold face on the matter. And that's what I
done. Oh, I'm a sharp one, and it takes a better man than a Yankee to
get ahead of me. I was really much obliged to him for telling me of that
blockading fleet at Hatteras, for now I'll know better than to go nigh
that place. Hold the old course, Morgan, and that will take us out of
the way of coasters and cruisers, both. I'll go below and turn in for a
short nap."

"If I should follow this business until I am gray-headed I don't think I
should ever again have so narrow an escape," said Marcy to himself, as
he too went below to take a little needed rest. "Why, it seems like a
dream; and somehow I can hardly bring myself to believe it really
happened. If the Yankees talk the way Captain Beardsley did, all I can
say for them is that they are queer folks."

It seemed as though the schooner's crew could never get through talking
about their short interview with the supply steamer, for every one of
them had given up all hope of escape, and looked for nothing else but to
see an armed boat put off to test the truth of Captain Beardsley's
statements regarding the _Hattie_ and her cargo. The mate, Morgan, was
completely bewildered. He could not understand how a man who had showed
a disposition to cry when he saw his vessel in danger, could be so cool
and even impudent when the critical moment came.

In due time all thoughts of the enemy they had left astern gave way to
speculations concerning those they might find before them. The latitude
of Hatteras Inlet was thought to be particularly dangerous; but that was
passed in the night and Marcy breathed easily again, until Beardsley
began to take a slant in toward the shore, and then there was another
season of suspense. But the day drew to a close without bringing any
suspicious smoke or sail to add to their fears, and when darkness came
Crooked Inlet was not more than thirty miles away. If the strong and
favoring wind that then filled the schooner's sails held out, her keel
would be plowing the waters of the Sound by midnight or a little later,
and Captain Beardsley's commission would be safe. At least that was what
the latter told Marcy; and, while he talked, he jingled some keys in his
pocket with as much apparent satisfaction as though they were the
dollars he hoped to put there in a few days more. But the old saying
that there is many a slip came very near holding true in Beardsley's
case. The latter was so certain that he had left all danger behind him,
and that he had nothing more to do but sail in at his leisure and land
his cargo when he got ready, that he did not think it worth while to man
the crosstrees after nightfall; consequently there was no watchful
lookout to warn him of the suspicious looking object that moved slowly
out of the darkness a mile or so ahead, and waited for him to come up.
About eleven o'clock Marcy Gray strolled forward and climbed out upon
the bowsprit to see if he could discover any signs of the land, which,
according to his calculations, ought not to be far distant.

"I might as well be out here as anywhere else," he thought, pulling out
the night-glass, which he had taken the precaution to bring with him.
"Of course the skipper will run her through without any aid from me, as
he did before, and so--what in the world is that? Looks like a smooth
round rock; but I know it isn't, for there's nothing of that sort about
this Inlet."

Marcy took another look through the glass, then backed quickly but
noiselessly down from his perch and ran aft to the quarter-deck. The
captain was standing there joking with his mates, and congratulating
them and himself on the safe and profitable run the _Hattie_ had made;
and as Marcy came up he threw back his head and gave utterance to a
hoarse laugh, which, in the stillness of the night, could have been
heard half a mile away.

"Captain! Captain!" exclaimed Marcy, in great excitement, "for goodness'
sake don't do that again! Keep still! There's a ship's long boat filled
with men right ahead of us."

It seemed to Marcy that Beardsley wilted visibly when this astounding
piece of news was imparted to him. His hearty laugh was broken short off
in the middle, so to speak, and when turned so that the light from the
binnacle shone upon his face, Marcy saw that it was as white as a
sheet.

"No!" he managed to gasp.

"Why, boy, you're scared to death," said one of the mates, rather
contemptuously. "Where's the ship for the long boat to come from?"

"I don't know anything about that," answered Marcy hurriedly. "I only
tell you what I saw with my own eyes. Here's the glass. Captain. Go
for'ard and take a look for yourself."

The captain snatched the glass with almost frantic haste and ran toward
the bow, followed by the mates and all the rest of the crew, with the
exception of the man at the wheel. With trembling hands Beardsley raised
the binoculars, but almost immediately took them down again to say, in
frightened tones:

"For the first time in my life I have missed my reckoning. We're lost,
and the Yankee fleet may be within less than a mile of us. Take a look,
Morgan. I never saw that rock before."

"But I tell you it isn't a rock," protested Marcy. "It is a boat, and
she's lying head on so that she won't show as plainly as she would if
she lay broadside to us. Do you see those long black streaks on each
side? Those are oars, and they were in motion when I first saw them."

The mate was so long in making his observations that Marcy grew
impatient, and wondered at his stupidity. He could see without the aid
of a glass that it was a boat and nothing else; and more than that, the
schooner had by this time drawn so near her that he could make out two
suspicious objects in her bow--one he was sure was a howitzer, and the
other looked very like the upright, motionless figure of a blue-jacket,
awaiting the order from the officer in command to pull the lock-string.
An instant later a second figure arose, as if from the stern-sheets, and
the command came clear and distinct:

"Heave to, or we'll blow you out of the water!"

"Now I hope you are satisfied!" exclaimed Marcy.

He expected to see Beardsley wilt again; but he did nothing of the sort.
It required an emergency to bring out what there was in him, and when he
saw that he must act, he did it without an instant's hesitation.

"Lay aft, all hands!" was the order he gave. "Marcy, stand by to watch
the buoys in the Inlet. Morgan, go to the wheel and hold her just as she
is. Don't luff so much as a hair's breadth. We'll run them Yankees down.
It's our only chance."

"And a very slim one it is," thought Marcy, as he took the glass from
the mate's hand and directed it toward the point where he thought the
entrance of the Inlet ought to be. "The cruiser to which this boat
belongs can't be far away, and she will come up the minute she hears the
roar of the howitzer."

"Heave to, or we'll sink you!" came the order, in louder and more
emphatic tones.

"Starboard a spoke or two. Steady at that," said Beardsley, turning
about and addressing the man who had been stationed in the waist to pass
his commands. "Ten to one they'll miss us, but all the same I wish I
knew how heavy them guns of their'n is."

"They have but one," replied Marcy, wondering at the captain's coolness.
"Can't you see it there in the bow?"

"Well, if it's a twenty-four pounder, like them old ones of our'n, and
they hit us at the water-line, they'll tear a hole in us as big as a
barn door."

All this while the schooner had been bearing swiftly down upon the
launch, and when the officer in command of her began to see through
Beardsley's little plan, he at once proceeded to set in motion one of
his own that was calculated to defeat it. His howitzer was loaded with a
five-second shrapnel, and this he fired at the schooner at a point-blank
range of less than a hundred yards. He couldn't miss entirely at that
short distance, but the missile flew too high to hull the
blockade-runner. It struck the flying jib-boom, breaking it short off
and rendering that sail useless, glanced and splintered the rail close
by the spot where the captain and his pilot were standing, went
shrieking off over the water, and finally exploding an eighth of a mile
astern. The skipper and Marcy were both prostrated by a splinter six
feet long and four inches thick that was torn from the rail; but they
scrambled to their feet again almost as soon as they touched the deck,
and when they looked ahead, fully expecting to find the launch under the
schooner's fore-foot and on the point of being run down, they saw an
astonishing as well as a most discouraging sight. The boat was farther
away than she was before, and her whole length could be seen now, for
not only was she broadside on, but the darkness above and around her,
which had hitherto rendered her shape and size somewhat indistinct, was
lighted up by a bright glare that shot up from somewhere amidships, and
the sound of escaping steam could be plainly heard.

              [Illustration: CAPTAIN BEARDSLEY SURPRISED.]

"Oh, my shoulder! Dog-gone it all, my shoulder!" cried Beardsley,
placing the instep of his left foot behind his right knee and hopping
about as if it were the lower portion of his anatomy that had been
injured instead of the upper. "She's got a steam ingine aboard of her,
and them oars of her'n was only meant for snooping up and down the coast
quiet and still' so't nobody couldn't hear 'em. We're gone this time,
Morgan; and I tell you that for a fact!"

The moment Marcy Gray recovered his feet he made an effort to pick up
the glass that had fallen from his grasp, but to his surprise, his left
hand refused to obey his will. When he made a second attempt, he found
that he could not move his hand at all unless he raised his arm at the
shoulder. He was not conscious of much pain, although he afterward said
that his arm felt a good deal as it did when Dick Graham accidentally
hit his biceps with a swiftly pitched ball. But his right hand was all
right, and with it he snatched up the glass and levied it at the Inlet,
which to his great delight he could plainly see straight ahead.

"Mind what you are about, Captain," said he, as soon as he could induce
the man to stand still and listen to him. "That first buoy is a black
one, and you want to leave it to port. If you keep on as you are holding
now you will leave it to starboard, and that will run you hard and fast
aground."

"Don't make much odds which way we go," whined Beardsley, holding fast
to his elbow with one hand and to his shoulder with the other. "Just
look what them Yankees is a doing!"

The captain became utterly disheartened when he saw that his plan for
sinking the launch and making good his escape into the Inlet was going
to end in failure, and Marcy did not blame him for it. The officer in
command of the small boat, whoever he might be, was a determined and
active fellow; his crew were picked men; his little craft was a
"trotter," and he knew how to handle both of them. He had been sent out
by one of the blockading squadron to patrol the coast and watch for just
such vessels as the _Hattie_ was, and although he had steam up all the
while, he used his twenty-four muffled oars, twelve on a side, as his
motive power; and this enabled him to slip along the coast without
making the least sound to betray his presence. As luck would have it, he
had not discovered Crooked Inlet. If he had, he would have lifted the
buoys, and it might have led to extra watchfulness on the part of the
blockading fleet. But he had discovered the _Hattie_ and his actions
proved that he did not mean to let her escape if he could help it.




                              CHAPTER VII.

                        THE MATE'S LUCKY SHOT.

"Just look what them Yankees is a doing now," repeated Captain
Beardsley; and when Marcy turned his eyes from the warning buoy to the
launch, he saw that the latter was scuttling rapidly out of harm's way;
that her bow was swinging around so that she would pass by within less
than a hundred feet of the schooner; that the oars had been dropped
overboard, and were dragging alongside by the lanyards that were
fastened to them; that some of the crew had arisen to their feet and
stood facing the _Hattie_; and that the rest were busy with the howitzer
in the bow.

"Heave to, or we'll cut you all to pieces!" shouted the officer in
command; and Marcy could see him plainly now, for he stood erect in the
stern-sheets with a boat-cloak around him. "We'll send canister and
rifle balls into you next time, and they'll come so thick that they
won't leave so much as a ratline of you. Heave to, I say!"

At this juncture a rifle or pistol shot, Marcy could not tell which it
was, sounded from the schooner's quarter-deck, and the plucky officer
was seen to throw his hands above his head, grasp wildly at the empty
air for a moment, and then disappear over the side of the launch. In an
instant all was confusion among the blue-jackets. The coxswain, who of
course was left in command, shouted to the engineer to shut off steam,
to the crew to drop their muskets and pick up their oars, and to the
captain of the howitzer to cut loose with his load of canister.

"Lay down, everybody," cried Beardsley, who plainly heard all these
orders; and suiting the action to the word, he quickly stretched himself
upon the deck. Marcy had barely time to follow his example before the
howitzer roared again, and the canister rattled through the rigging like
hail, tearing holes in the canvas, splintering a mast here and a boom
there, but never cutting a stay or halliard. If a topmast had gone by
the board, or a sail come down by the run, the schooner would have been
quite at the mercy of the launch; for the latter could have carried her
by boarding, or taken a position astern and peppered the _Hattie_ with
shrapnel until Captain Beardsley would have been glad to surrender. The
captain did not see how his vessel could escape being crippled, and he
would have surrendered then and there if any one in the launch had
called upon him to do so; but when he got upon his feet and saw that
every rope held, and that the schooner was just on the point of entering
her haven of refuge, he took heart again.

"Marcy, go aft and tell Morgan that that buoy ahead is a black one,"
said he, as soon as he had taken time to recover his wits. "Lay for'ard
some of us and cut away this useless canvas. The _Hattie_ ain't catched
yet, doggone it all. I tell you, lads, it takes somebody besides a
plodding, dollar-loving Yankee to get to windward of Lon Beardsley."

"The captain desired me to remind you that that buoy is a black one, and
you want to leave it to port," said Marcy, taking his stand beside the
man at the wheel. "Who fired that shot? It came from this end of the
vessel."

"The second mate fired it," replied Morgan, "and he done it just in the
nick of time. The killing of that officer was all that saved our
bacon."

"Oh, I hope he wasn't killed!" exclaimed Marcy.

"You do, hey? Well, I don't. I'd like to see the last blockader on this
coast tumbled into the drink in the same way. What did the old man say
about it?"

"Not a word. I think he was too surprised to say anything."

"Was anybody hurt by that shell?" continued Morgan. "I seen the jib
flying in the wind and the rail ripped up, and you and the old man was
standing right there."

"Something or other knocked both of us flatter than pancakes," answered
Marcy. "The captain must have been hit all over; but I was struck only
on the arm, and I don't seem to have much use of it any more."

"You can go forward and lookout for the buoys, can't you? All right.
Sing out when ever you see one, and I will stay here and take her
through while the cap'n gets that headsail out of the way."

Before obeying this order Marcy stopped long enough to level the glass
toward the place where he supposed the launch to be. Having worked the
water out of the cylinders the engineer had shut off the stop-cocks so
that she could not be heard, and as there was no flame shooting out of
her smoke-stack, she could not be seen; but she was still on top of the
water, and eager to do mischief. While Marcy was moving his glass around
trying to locate her, the howitzer spoke again; but as the schooner took
the wind free after rounding the first buoy, her course was changed, so
that the shell passed behind her, and exploded far ahead and to the
right.

"You've got your wish," said Morgan. "That shot means that they have
picked up their cap'n, and that he's as full of fight as ever. Well, let
him bang away, if he wants to. He can't hurt the sand-hills, and this
channel is so crooked that he won't hit us except by accident."

"But he will follow in our wake, won't he?"

"Who cares if he does so long as he don't sight us? We'll dodge him easy
enough after we get into the Sound. Now toddle for'ard and look out for
me."

["It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," thought the boy, as he
leaned his uninjured arm upon the splintered rail and brought the glass
to his eye. "This night's work will put an end to the _Hattie's_
blockade-running. If that fellow astern don't catch us, he will surely
find and pull up the buoys, and then we can't follow the channel except
by sending a boat on ahead with a lead-line. That might do when we were
going out, but it wouldn't work running in if there was an enemy close
behind us. Another thing, this Inlet will be watched in future. Now you
mark my words."] "Red buoy on the starboard bow," he called out to the
man at the wheel.

Morgan repeated the words to show that he understood them, and just then
Beardsley came up, having seen the useless jib brought on deck and
stowed away.

"Be careful and make no mistake, Marcy," said he. "It's a matter of life
and death with us now--and money."

"I can call off the color of every buoy between here and the Sound,"
replied the pilot confidently. "I took particular pains to remember the
order in which they were put out. Where are you hurt, Captain?" he
added, seeing that the man had let go of his shoulder and was now
holding fast to both elbows.

"I'm hurt in every place; that's where I am hurt," said Beardsley,
looking savagely at Marcy, as if the latter was to blame for it.
"Something hit me ker-whallop on this side, and the deck took me
ker-chunk on the other; and I'll bet there ain't a spot on ary side as
big as an inch where I ain't black and blue. You wasn't touched, was
you? But I thought I seen you come down when I did."

"I went down fast enough," answered Marcy. "I bumped my head pretty
heavily on the deck, but the worst hurt I got was right here. And I
declare, there's a bunch that don't belong to me. Is it a fracture of
the humerus, I wonder?"

"A which?" exclaimed the puzzled captain.

"I really believe the bone of my upper arm is broken," replied Marcy,
feeling of the bunch to which he had referred. "It doesn't hurt much
except when I touch it. It only feels numb."

Just then the howitzer spoke again, and another shrapnel flew wide of
the schooner and burst among the sand dunes. Another and another
followed at short intervals, and then the firing ceased. The launch had
given it up as a bad job; the pursuit was over and Marcy and the captain
were the only ones injured.

"She has either run hard and fast aground, or else she is amusing
herself with them buoys of our'n," said Beardsley, when he became
satisfied that the launch was no longer following in the schooner's
wake. "Now, where's that good-looking son of mine who fired the lucky
shot that tumbled that Yankee officer overboard? Whoever he is, I'll
double his wages. He ought to have it, for he saved the vessel and her
cargo. Let him show up."

The second mate obeyed the order, exhibiting the revolver that had fired
the shot, and the captain complimented him in no measured terms. Marcy
could not help acknowledging to himself that their escape was owing
entirely to the prompt action the mate had taken without waiting for
orders; but all the same he was sorry for that Federal officer.

Less than an hour's run sufficed to take the schooner out of the Inlet
and into the Sound, and when Beardsley had given out the course and seen
the sails trimmed to suit it, he went into his cabin, from which he
presently issued to pass the word for Marcy Gray. When the boy descended
the ladder he found the first mate and two foremast hands there besides
the captain; and on the table he saw two pieces of thin board, and
several strips of cloth that had evidently been torn up for bandages. He
noticed, too, that the atmosphere was filled with the odor of liniment.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, in some alarm.

"We're going to set that--that--what-do-you-call-it of your'n," replied
the captain cheerfully. The name that Marcy had given to the bone of his
upper arm was too much for him. He could not remember it.

The boy knew that all sea captains have more or less knowledge of
medicine and surgery. It is necessary that they should have, for sailors
are often seized with illness, or meet with serious accidents when their
ship is at sea, and so far from a doctor that without immediate aid from
some source they would surely lose their lives. Marcy had read of a
whaling captain, one of whose men was jerked overboard from his boat by
a wounded whale, dragged for six hundred feet or more through the water
with frightful speed, and who was finally released by his leg giving way
to the strain. The captain saw that that leg must be attended to or the
man would die. His crew were too badly frightened to help him, so he
amputated the injured member himself; and all the surgical instruments
his ship afforded were a carving-knife, a carpenter's saw, and a
fish-hook. But he saved the man's life. Marcy thought of this and
shuddered at the thought of submitting himself to Beardsley's rude
surgery.

"I believe I would rather wait until we get to Newbern," said he
doubtfully.

"Why, man alive, we may not see port for a week," answered the captain.
"How do we know but what there are a dozen or more steam launches, like
the one we've just left astern, loafing about in the Sound waiting for
us? If there are, we'll have to get shet of 'em somehow, and that will
take time. If we don't 'tend to your arm now, it may be so bad when the
doctor sees it that he can't do nothing with it without half killing of
you. Take off his coat and vest, men; and Morgan, you roll up his
sleeve. There is folks around home who think you are for the Union, and
that you ain't secesh, even if you do belong to my vessel. If you run
foul of one of 'em while you are gone on your furlong, just point to
your arm and tell him to hold his yawp."

"Are you going to give me a leave of absence?" asked Marcy, who was so
delighted at the thought that he could scarcely keep from showing it.

"I reckon I'll have to. I ain't got no use for a one-handed man; but
I'll keep your place open for you, never fear. Just see that, now. Ain't
that a pretty looking arm for a white boy to carry around with him? It
makes me hate them Yankees wusser'n I did before."

The wounded arm was already becoming inflamed, and it was painful, too;
and although Beardsley's assistants were as careful as they could be,
Marcy winced while they were helping him off with his coat and vest and
rolling up his sleeve. When this had been done one of the men, in
obedience to a slight nod from the captain, seized Marcy around the
chest under his arms, the mate by a movement equally quick grasped his
left wrist, and both began pulling in opposite directions with all their
strength, while Beardsley passed his huge rough hands up and down over
the "bunch" until he was satisfied that the protruding bone had been
pulled back to its place. The operation was a painful one, and the only
thing that kept Marcy from crying out was the remembrance of Beardsley's
words "I ain't got no use for a one-handed man." That broken arm would
bring him a furlough.

"There, now; that'll do. 'Vast heaving," said the captain, at length.
"Put some of the stuff in that bottle on one of them bandages and hand
it over here. Pretty rough way of getting to go home, but better than
none at all, and I reckon your maw will be just as glad to see you as
she would if you had two good arms. Don't you reckon she will?"

After his arm had been bandaged and placed in a sling, Marcy was quite
willing to go into the forecastle and lie down in his bunk; and there he
stayed until the schooner entered the Neuse River and a tug came
alongside to tow her up to the city. This time there were plenty of
cheers to welcome her, the first coming from the working parties who
were building the fortifications, and the next from the soldiers and
loafers who were assembled upon the wharf to which she was made fast,
and who howled themselves hoarse when they caught sight of the holes in
her sails, her broken bowsprit, and her splintered rail.

"I see that blockade running has its dangers as well as privateering,"
said Beardsley's agent, as he sprang over the rail and seized the
captain's hand. "The _Hattie_ is cut up pretty badly, but the _Osprey_
was never touched. Been in a fight?"

"Well, no, not much of a fight, because we uns didn't have nothing to
fight with. But the schooner ran through a pretty tol'able heavy fire, I
tell you."

It was all over now, and Beardsley could afford to treat the matter with
indifference; but Marcy remembered that when that splinter knocked him
down, the captain was the worst frightened man in the crew. However,
Beardsley was not as badly hurt as he thought he was. When he came to
make an examination of his injuries, all he could find was a black and
blue spot on one of his shoulders that was about half as large as his
hand; but he made more fuss over that than Marcy Gray did over his
broken arm.

"Anybody shot?" continued the agent.

"Well, yes; two of us got touched a little, but not enough to growl
over. You see it was this-a-way----"

"I suppose I may go ashore now and hunt up a surgeon, may I not?" Marcy
interposed.

He thought from the way Beardsley settled himself against the rail that
he was preparing for a long talk with the agent, and that it would be a
good plan to have his own affairs settled before the captain became too
deeply interested in his narrative to listen to him. There was little to
detain him in Newbern. On the way up the river Beardsley had given him a
written leave of absence for ninety days, and a check on the bank for
his money; and all he had to do besides presenting that check was to
have his arm examined by a surgeon.

"Of course you can go," replied Beardsley. "And if I don't see you when
you come back for your dunnage, don't forget them little messages I give
you for the folks at home, nor them letters; and bear in mind that I
want you back as soon as ever you can get well."

Marcy promised to remember it all, and the captain went on to say:

"He's the bravest lad that ever stepped in shoe leather. When them
Yankees sent that shell into us and knocked him and me down and smashed
his arm all to flinders, he stood in the bow and piloted us through
Crooked Inlet as slick as falling off a log; and there was his arm
broken all the while, and hanging by his side as limp as a piece of wet
rope. Oh, he's a good one, and I don't for the life of me see how I am
going to get on without him. I've said as much in them letters I wrote
to the folks to home."

Under almost any other circumstances Marcy Gray would have been
disgusted; but as it was, he was quite willing that Beardsley should
talk about him in this strain as often as he felt like it.

"Perhaps it will help me with those secret enemies at home," he said to
himself, as he stepped upon the wharf and forced his way slowly through
the crowd, not, however, without being compelled to shake hands with a
dozen or more who wanted to know when and where he got hurt and who did
it, and all about it. "I should really like to see the inside of the
letters the captain gave me to hand to Shelby and the rest. I wonder if
he thinks I am foolish enough to open and read them? He'll not trap me
that way; but I wouldn't trust any letters to him that I didn't want him
to read, I bet you."

Arriving at a drug store which bore the name of a medical man upon one
of its doorposts, Marcy entered and asked where he could find somebody
to tell him whether or not his broken arm had been properly set and
cared for.

"Step right this way, and I will tell you in less than five minutes,"
said the man who stood behind the counter. "How did you break it?"

"I was knocked down," replied Marcy.

"Who knocked you down?"

"A Yankee!"

"Heyday! Bull Run?"

"No, sir; Crooked Inlet."

"Well, I thought you looked like a seafaring man. What vessel do you
belong to?"

"The blockade-runner _Hattie._ She used to be the privateer _Osprey._"

"Were you one of the brave fellows who captured the _Mary Hollins_?"
exclaimed the surgeon, giving Marcy a look of admiration. "It was a
gallant deed."

"I was there when she was taken," answered the boy, while the doctor was
helping him off with his coat. "Do you know what become of her crew?"

"They were paroled and sent North long ago. We didn't want such folks
among us."

"But they are not prisoners of war."

"That doesn't matter. They had to promise that they would not take up
arms against us until they were regularly exchanged; and if they do, and
we find it out, they will stand a fine chance of being strung up. You've
got a pretty good surgeon aboard your ship, and he has made a good job
of this. I wonder if I know him. Is he a Newbern man?"

"No, sir; he hails from up toward Plymouth. And he isn't a doctor,
either. He's the captain."

"Oh, ah!" said the surgeon, who was very much surprised to hear it. "I
see, now that I come to look at it closely, that it is not quite as
straight as I thought it was. It sticks out a little on this side, and
your arm will always be more or less crooked. It is unfortunate that you
did not have a surgeon aboard; but we will have to let it go."

"Of course I can't do duty with one hand," said Marcy, "and so the
captain has given me leave to go home for awhile. I can travel on the
cars, I suppose?"

"There's nothing in the world to hinder it," replied the medical man,
who seemed on a sudden to have lost all interest in Marcy and his
injured arm. "I will do it up again and give you a little medicine, and
you will get along all right. It's a mere trifle."

When Marcy asked what his bill was, he told himself that he made a
mistake when he said it was the captain and not a doctor who set his
arm, for the surgeon charged him a good round price for his trouble, as
well as for the little bottle of tonic he wrapped up for him; and when
he went to the telegraph office, the operator who sent off a dispatch to
his mother made no distinction between him and a citizen. The dispatch
ran as follows:

Arrived from Nassau this morning with a valuable cargo after a running
fight with the Yankees. Had two men slightly injured. Will leave for
Boydtown by first train.

"After mother reads that she will not be so very much shocked when she
sees me with my arm in a sling," was what he told himself as he passed
the dispatch over to the operator.

"Did you have a fight with one of the blockaders?" asked the latter
carelessly. He had become accustomed to the sight of wounded men since
the battle of Bull Run was fought, and did not take a second look at
Marcy.

"It wasn't much of a fight, seeing that there was but one shot fired on
our side," answered the pilot. "But that one shot was what brought us
through. It wasn't a blockader, either, but a launch; and if you want to
see what she did to us, step down to the wharf and take a look at the
_Hattie_. One more round of canister would have made a wreck of us."

"And you happened to be one of the two who were wounded, I reckon," said
the operator. "Fifty cents, please."

"The last time I sent off a dispatch from here you did not tax me a cent
for it," Marcy reminded him. "Is your patriotism on the wane?"

"Not much; but you couldn't expect us to keep up that thank-ye business
forever, could you? How would we run the line if we did? We think as
much of the brave boys who are standing between us and Lincoln's
Abolitionists as we ever did; but it takes the hard cash to pay
operators and buy poles and wires."

Marcy had no trouble in getting his check cashed, and when he went back
to the schooner after his valise and bundles, he had twenty-one hundred
dollars in his pocket. But there were seventeen hundred dollars of it
that did not belong to him. He was only keeping it until he could have
opportunity to return it to the master of the _Mary Hollins._ He found
that Captain Beardsley had gone ashore with his agent, and as Marcy had
already said good-bye to him, it was not necessary that he should waste
any valuable time in hunting him up. He took a hasty leave of his
shipmates, hired a darkey to carry his luggage to the depot, and was in
time to purchase his ticket for a train that was on the point of leaving
for Goldsborough. He had hardly settled himself in his seat before he
became aware that nearly all the passengers in the car were looking at
him, and finally one of them came and seated himself by his side.

"You are not in uniform," said the passenger, "but all the same I take
it for granted that it was the Yankees who put your arm in a sling."

"Yes, sir; they did it," answered Marcy.

"Well, now, I want to know if it's a fact that the Yankees outnumbered
us two to one in that fight," continued the man.

"You refer to the battle of Bull Run, I suppose. I don't know. I wasn't
there, and I don't hesitate to say that I am glad of it. One howitzer is
as much as I care to face. I got this hurt while coming into Crooked
Inlet on the schooner _Hattie_. She's a blockade-runner."

"Oh! well, if there's going to be a war, as some people seem to think,
you blockade-runners will be of quite as much use to the Confederacy as
the soldiers. We shall be dependent upon foreign governments for many
things that we used to get from the North, and men like you will have to
supply us. Was it much of a fight?"

Marcy briefly related the story, and when it was finished the man went
back to his old seat; but during the journey the young pilot was obliged
to tell more than a score of people that he was not present at the
battle of Bull Run, and consequently could not have got his injury
there. He kept his ears open all the way, and was gratified to learn
that the Confederates had not followed up their victory, that they were
not in Washington, and that there was no reason to suppose that they had
any intention of going there immediately; and he thought he knew the
reason why, when he heard one of the passengers say that a few more
victories like Bull Run would ruin the Confederacy.

At an early hour the next morning Marcy stepped off the train at Boyd
town and found Morris waiting for him. That faithful servitor's eyes
grew to twice their usual dimensions when he saw his young master with
his arm in a sling, and without waiting to learn the extent of his
injuries, he broke out into loud lamentations, and railed at the Yankees
in such a way that the by-standers were led to believe that old Morris
was the best kind of a rebel.

"The Missus done tole me two men shot on the _Hattie_ and las' night I
dreamed you one of 'em," said he.

"Silence!" whispered Marcy angrily; "can't you see that you are drawing
the attention of all the people on the platform by your loud talking? I
wasn't shot, either. Come to the carriage and I will tell you all about
it."

Even after Morris had been assured that the young pilot had merely been
knocked down by a splinter, Marcy didn't tell him that that "splinter"
weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, for he knew it would get to
his mother's ears if he did; and that his injuries were by no means
serious; the old slave was not satisfied, but continued to scold and
fume at such a rate that Marcy was glad when the carriage whirled
through the gate and drew up at the steps, at the top of which his
mother stood waiting to receive him.

"Da' he is, Missus; but the Yankees done kill him," exclaimed Morris,
opening and shutting the carriage door with a bang, as if he hoped in
that way to work off some of his excitement.




                             CHAPTER VIII.

                        A NOISE AT THE WINDOW.

Mrs. Gray's countenance grew white with alarm. She flew down the steps,
and throwing both her arms about her son's neck, hid her face on his
shoulder and sobbed violently. Marcy put his uninjured arm around her,
and his mother leaned so heavily upon it that the boy thought she was
going to faint.

"Now see what you have done, you black rascal, by wagging your tongue so
freely," said Marcy angrily. "I've the best notion in the world to have
you sent to the field."

"But, moster," protested the frightened coachman, "de Yankees did
shoot----"

"Hold your tongue! If you lisp another word I will have you sent to the
overseer as sure as you are a living darkey. Now take those things out
of the carriage and put them in my room; and when you have done that, go
off somewhere and spend an hour or two every day telling the truth, so
that you will get used to it. Come into the house," he added gently,
leading his mother up the steps, "and I will tell you all about it. I
wasn't shot. I was struck by a splinter."

"Oh, Marcy," sobbed Mrs. Gray, "your face tells a different story. You
have suffered--you are suffering now; and there isn't a particle of
color in your cheeks. Don't try to deceive me, for I must know the worst
sooner or later."

"I am not trying to deceive you," answered Marcy, although he _was_
trying to break the disagreeable news as gently as he could. "I was
knocked down by a splinter and my arm was broken."

"There now," began his mother.

"But it's all right," Marcy hastened to add. "Beardsley set the bone in
less than three hours after it was broken, and the surgeon I consulted
in Newbern said he made a good job of it. I don't know what you think
about it, but I am not sorry it happened."

"Oh, Marcy! why do you say that?"

"Because it gave me a chance to come home. To tell you the truth,
blockade running is getting to be a dangerous business. We had four
narrow escapes this trip. Beardsley's impudence and a Union captain's
simplicity brought us out of the first scrape, a storm came to our aid
in the second, sheer good luck and a favoring breeze saved us in the
third, and a shot from the second mate's revolver brought us out of the
fourth. We are liable to fall into the hands of the cruisers any day;
and suppose I had been captured and thrown into a Northern prison! You
might not have seen me again for a year or two; perhaps longer. Bring
those bundles in here and take the valise upstairs," he added to the
coachman, who just then passed along the hall with Marcy's luggage in
his hands. "Open that bundle, mother. You need not be ashamed to wear
those dresses, for they were bought in Nassau with honest money--money
that I earned by doing duty as a foremast hand. I didn't pay any duty on
them because no one asked me for it. And in fact I don't know whether
there is a custom-house in Newbern or not. The box in the other bundle
contains nothing but bottles of quinine."

"What induced you to get so much?" asked Mrs. Gray, who had wiped away
her tears and was trying to look cheerful again.

"Captain Beardsley first called my attention to the fact that medicine
had gone up in price, and I saw by a paper I got in Nassau that the
rebels are already smuggling quinine across the Potomac," answered
Marcy. "There's a good deal of ague about here, and we'd be in a pretty
fix if we should all get down with it, and no medicine in the house to
help us out." Here he got up and drew his chair closer to his mother's
side, adding in a whisper, "I've twenty-one hundred dollars in gold in
my valise, lacking what I paid for my railroad ticket, and nearly four
hundred dollars of it belongs to me. The rest belongs to the captain of
the _Hollins._"

"Do you still cling to the hope that you will some day meet him again?"
asked his mother.

"I know it will be like hunting for a needle in a haystack, but if I
don't find him I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried to,
and that I haven't spent any of his money. I'll keep it locked in my
trunk until my arm gets so that I can handle a spade, and then I'll hide
it in one of the flower beds. Now, how is everything about home? Has
Kelsey shown his ugly face here since I went away, or have you heard
anything from those 'secret enemies' that Wat Gifford spoke of? How has
Hanson behaved himself?"

Mrs. Gray's report was so satisfactory that Marcy was put quite at his
ease. She had had nothing to worry over, she told him, except, of
course, his absence and Jack's, and if she had not received so many
warnings she would not have suspected that there were such things as
secret enemies around her. But she had relaxed none of her vigilance,
and was always on her guard when any of the neighbors came to see her.
It was a dreadful way to live, but there was no help for it.

By the time Marcy had removed some of the stains of travel from his face
and clothing, supper was announced; and as he had to talk about
something during the meal, he entertained his mother with a minute
description of the exciting incidents that happened during the
_Hattie's_ homeward run. He could talk of these things in his ordinary
tone of voice, and he did not care who overheard him. More than that, he
was satisfied that every word he uttered in the presence of the girl who
waited at table would go straight to Hanson's ears, and he was really
talking for Hanson's benefit. He retired at an early hour, after his arm
had been bathed and bandaged again (his mother could not keep back her
tears when she saw how inflamed and angry it looked), and left his lamp
burning, as he had done every night since his friend Gifford dropped
that hint about a visit from an organized band of 'longshoremen. Before
he got into bed he unlocked his valise and took from it two things that
his mother knew nothing about,--a brace of heavy revolvers,--which he
placed where he could get his hands upon them at a moment's warning.
"Thank goodness the old flag is above me once more, and not that
secession rag that Beardsley seems to be so proud of," thought Marcy, as
he pounded his pillow into shape and drew the quilts over his shoulders.
"If Colonel Shelby and the rest knew that there are two Union flags
somewhere among these bedclothes, how long do you suppose this house
would stand? If those men are such good rebels, I can't for the life of
me understand why they don't go into the service, instead of staying at
home and making trouble for their neighbors. I should think they would
be ashamed of themselves."

There were plenty of such men all over the South, and Marcy Gray was not
the only one who wondered why they did not hasten to the front, seeing
that they were so very hostile to the Yankees and their sympathizers,
and professed so much zeal for the cause of Southern independence. His
cousin Rodney often asked himself the same question while Dick Graham
was staying at his father's house, waiting for a chance to get across
the Mississippi River. Tom Randolph, who could not forget that Captain
Hubbard's Rangers had refused to give him the office he wanted, was
Rodney's evil genius. Although Tom became in time commander of a small
company of Home Guards, he could be for the old flag or against it, as
circumstances seemed to require. When the Union forces took possession
of Baton Rouge and the gunboats anchored in front of the city, Randolph
sent more than one squad of Yankee cavalry to search Mr. Gray's house
for firearms, and took measures to keep Rodney, Dick Graham, and the
other discharged Confederates in constant trouble; but when General
Breckenridge and his army appeared, and it began to look as though the
rebels were about to drive the Union forces out and take possession of
Baton Rouge and the surrounding country, Tom Randolph gave his scouts
the names of all the Union men in Mooreville and vicinity, and of course
they did not escape persecution. But Tom, sly as he was, could not play
a double part forever. His sin found him out and his punishment came
close upon the heels of it. We shall tell all about it in its proper
place.

Having no watch to stand on this particular night, and having no fear of
capture by cruisers or a fight with armed steam launches, Marcy soon
fell asleep, to be awakened about midnight by a sound that sent the cold
chills all over him. He could not have told just what it was, but all
the same it frightened him. He sat up in bed and pulled one of his
revolvers from under his pillow. He listened intently, and in a few
seconds the sound was repeated. Then he knew that it was made by a
pebble which some one in the yard below had tossed against his window.
It was a signal of some sort, but who made it, and why should the
visitor, whoever he might be, seek to arouse him without disturbing his
mother?

"By gracious!" thought Marcy, resting his revolver on his knee with the
muzzle turned toward the window, as if he half expected to see some one
try to force an entrance there. "What can it mean! It may be a dangerous
piece of business to draw the curtain and open that window, for how do I
know but that there's somebody below waiting for a chance to pop me
over? How do I know but those 'longshoremen have come up----"

When this thought passed through the boy's mind his fear gave place to
indignation; and hesitating no longer he threw off the bedclothes and
advanced toward the window, just as another pebble rattled against it.
He dashed the curtain aside, threw up the sash, and thrust his head and
his revolver out of the window. The night was so dark that he could not
see a thing except the dark sky and the darker shadows of the trees
against it.

"Who's there?" he demanded. "Speak quick."

    "The despot's heel is on thy shore;
     His torch is at thy temple door.
     Avenge the patriotic gore
     That flecks the streets of Baltimore
     And be the battle queen of yore--
                   Maryland! my Maryland!"

That was the answer he received to his challenge. It was given in a
voice that he had never heard before, and Marcy was so utterly amazed
that he could not interrupt the speaker, or say a word himself when the
verse was concluded. It was part of a rebel song that had recently
become very popular in Baltimore, but it had not yet reached North
Carolina. For only an instant, however, did Marcy stand motionless and
speechless, and then he pointed his weapon in the direction from which
the voice sounded, saying in steady tones:

"If you don't give me an answer that I can understand, I'll cut loose.
Who are you?"

"I am a homeless, friendless smuggler," replied the voice; and at the
same instant a familiar bark, followed by an impatient whine, told the
astonished Marcy that his faithful watchman, Bose, was under the window
with the stranger. The unexpected discovery made every nerve in his body
tingle with excitement, and his next words were uttered in a husky and
indistinct tone.

"Jack!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Jack! Is that you?"

"It's I," answered the visitor, speaking in his natural voice this time.
"I'm here safe and sound, and none the worse for having been a prisoner
in the hands of that pirate, Captain Semmes."

"Go round to the front door and I will be right down," said Marcy, in
suppressed tones. He could not imagine why his brother should make his
presence known in this guarded way instead of boldly demanding
admittance at the door, but he knew that there was some reason for it
and conducted himself accordingly. He moved about his room very quietly
while he dressed himself as well as he could with only one hand to work
with, and then he caught up the lamp, hurried downstairs and made his
way to his mother's room. His low tap met with an instant response.

"Oh, mother," exclaimed Marcy, "Jack's come home, and he's Union."

"Of course he is for the Union," answered Mrs. Gray calmly, although she
was almost as highly excited as Marcy was. "I have never thought of him
as being a rebel."

"The rebels had him prisoner," added Marcy; and with this bit of news to
add to his mother's excitement, the boy ran to the front door. The
moment he opened it a stalwart young fellow sprang upon the threshold
with his arms spread out; but he stopped suddenly when his eyes fell
upon Marcy's white face and upon the sling in which he carried his left
hand.

"What's happened to you?" he demanded, as soon as he could speak.

"I got that while helping Captain Beardsley run a cargo of contraband
goods through Crooked Inlet," replied Marcy, laughing at the expression
of surprise and disgust that came upon the young sailor's bronzed face
as he listened to the words. "First I was a privateer and now I am a
blockade-runner."

"There must be some good reason for it, because I know as well as you do
that you do not belong on that side of the house," said the returned
wanderer, closing and locking the door after beckoning to Bose, who was
never permitted to enter the house except upon extraordinary occasions.
"I had a fine chance to become a rebel pirate. When the prize-master who
was put aboard of us after we were captured, found that I was from a
seceded State, he promised if I would ship on the _Sumter_ to ask
Captain Semmes----"

Just at this point the young sailor looked over his brother's shoulder
and saw his mother coming along the hall. A second later he held her
clasped in his arms. She looked very small and frail while standing
beside that tall, broad-shouldered son, who was as fine a specimen of an
American sailor as could be found anywhere outside of New England.
Although he was but three years older than Marcy, who was by no means a
puny fellow, he stood head and shoulders above him, and was built like a
young Hercules. It was little wonder that Mrs. Gray and Marcy had
awaited his coming with the greatest anxiety and impatience, or that the
former should say to himself: "From this time on I can sleep in peace.
Jack's got home and mother's property is safe."

"Now that you have got through saying 'hallo,' I'd like to have you tell
me why you came home like a thief in the night instead of knocking at
the door," said Marcy. "I don't know when I have been so frightened."

"Aha! That shows that I did not make a mistake in going to so much
trouble to be on the safe side. You are afraid of the neighbors, are
you? I read the papers when I could get them, and among other things I
learned that the South is divided against itself, and that few men know
for certain who their friends are. Let's go somewhere and sit down."

Jack led his mother into the sitting-room. Marcy following with the
lamp, and taking care to see that all the doors were closed before he
seated himself.

"I should judge from your actions, Marcy, that this family is divided
against itself, and that you are afraid to trust the servants," said
Jack. "If that's the case, the papers told the truth. Now tell me how
you got that bad arm. Were you shot?"

Marcy did not spend much time on his story, for he was impatient to
learn when and where his brother had been captured, and how he had
managed to escape after a prize crew had been thrown aboard his vessel.
He simply told of his experience in the blockade-runner _Hattie_,
leaving his exploits in the _Osprey_ to be narrated at some future
time.

"I am glad the _Hattie_ got through the blockade all right seeing that
you were aboard of her," said Jack, when Marcy brought his story to a
close. "But if Uncle Sam doesn't do something to break up
blockade-running, he'll have a war on his hands that will make him open
his eyes. It will not take me five minutes to tell my story. I was a
prisoner not more than twelve hours, and during that time not the first
exciting thing happened. If it hadn't been for the fact that there was a
strange officer in command of the brig, and that our old man was walking
around with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing, we wouldn't have
known that we were prisoners at all."

With this introduction the returned sailor settled into an easy position
among the sofa pillows and related his experience very nearly as
follows, with this exception: He quite forgot to say that he was the one
who first conceived the idea of taking the _Sabine_ out of the hands of
the prize crew that Semmes had placed aboard of her, and that, if it had
not been for his courage and prompt action, the brig would either have
been sold for the benefit of the Confederate Government, or burned in
the Caribbean Sea after her neutral cargo had been put ashore.

It happened on the morning of July 4, and the _Sabine_, in company with
the brig _Herndon_, was sailing along the southern coast of Cuba, having
recently left the port of Trinidad-de-Cuba with a cargo of sugar and
molasses, which was consigned to an English port in the Island of
Jamaica. Although there was some sea on and rain squalls were frequent,
there was but little breeze, and consequently the _Sabine_ could not
have run into neutral waters even if second mate Jack Gray, who had
charge of the deck, had known that the steamer that was bearing down
upon her was the freebooter, _Sumter_.

"What do you mean by neutral waters?" Marcy wanted to know.

"Why, every country that owns a strip of seacoast owns also the waters
for three miles out," replied Jack. "And inside of that marine league,
as it is called, the cruisers of one nation mustn't trouble the ships of
another with which it happens to be at war. For example, if two armed
vessels belonging to two different nations who are at loggerheads,
happen to sail into the same neutral port, they can't fight there, but
must go outside; and if one of them runs out, the other must wait
twenty-four hours before following her."

The coast of Cuba was in plain view when the _Sumter_ was sighted, but
as there was little breeze stirring, and the brigs could not escape,
Captain Semmes was not obliged to resort to the cowardly trick he
usually practiced--that is, hoisting the English ensign to quiet the
fears of the crew of the unlucky vessels he intended to destroy. He
began business at once; and the first thing that drew the attention of
second mate Jack Gray, as he planked the quarter-deck thinking of almost
everything except Confederate war vessels, was the roar of a thirty-two
pounder. Jack looked up to see a thick cloud of white smoke floating
slowly away from the side of the steamer, and to take note of the fact
that a peculiar looking flag floated from her peak. Jack had never seen
it before, but he knew in a minute what it was. At the same time he
noticed that the _Herndon_ which was half a mile or so in advance of the
_Sabine_ had backed her main topsail and hoisted her own colors--the
Stars and Stripes.

"Tumble up here, Captain," exclaimed Jack, rushing to the top of the
companion-ladder. "There's a rebel steamer on the lee bow, speaking to
us."

"I wondered what that noise was," said the captain, as he came up the
ladder in two jumps, and saw that a boat had already been lowered from
the steamer and was putting off to take charge of the _Herndon_.

The captain knew that there were rebel privateers afloat, for in a
foreign port he had read of the escape of the _Savannah_ from Charleston
on June 2, and of the inglorious ending of her short career as a
freebooter. The _Savannah_ captured one merchantman with a cargo of
sugar, and afterward gave chase to a brig, which turned out to be the
man of war _Perry_. The _Savannah_ was captured after a little race, and
her crew were sent to New York as prisoners. But the captain of the
_Sabine_ never knew until that moment that the rebels had let loose
steam vessels to prey upon the commerce of the Northern States. He
looked at the "pirate," which, having sent off a boat to complete the
capture of the _Herndon_ had put herself in motion again and was drawing
closer to the _Sabine_ glanced up at the sails, and then turned his
wistful eyes toward the Cuban coast line.

"There isn't the ghost of a chance," said Jack, who easily read the
thoughts that were passing in the mind of his commander. "If we try to
run and she doesn't feel like chasing us, she'll shoot us into little
bits."

"She's got five guns," remarked the first mate, who was making a close
examination of the steamer through the spyglass. "She's loading one of
them, and it might be a good plan for us to come to and show colors."

These words brought the captain to his senses. He gave the necessary
orders, and in a few minutes the brig's maintopsail had been backed and
the Union emblem was floating from her peak. There were an astonished
lot of men aboard of her, and they were so angry, too, that they could
not stand still. They clenched their hands and gritted their teeth when
they saw a boat filled with armed men put off from the steamer, and when
the boarding officer came over the side and informed the captain of the
_Sabine_ in courteous tones, that his vessel was a prize to the
Confederate cruiser _Sumter_ they could scarcely control themselves.

"I suppose I shall have to give in," said the Yankee skipper. "But I
tell you plainly that if I had five guns and as many men as you've got,
one or the other of us would have been on his way to the bott

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