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.