BAD NEWS FROM MARCY.
Sailor Jack and his old commander spent two hours locked in the
_Hyperion’s_ cabin, and if a stranger could have seen how very cordial
and friendly they were, or had heard the peals of laughter that arose
when one or the other described some amusing scene through which he had
passed since they last met, he never would have dreamed that one had
risked life and liberty in doing what he could to put down the
rebellion, while the other had run an equal risk in bringing aid and
comfort to it.
Captain Frazier had been a daring and successful blockade runner as long
as his Boston owners could make money by it, and there were not many
cruisers on the Atlantic coast that had not, at one time or another,
sighted and given chase to the fleet _West Wind_, nor were there very
many officers and sailormen who could not recognize her as far as they
could see her. When light swift steamers were added to the blockading
fleet the business became too uncertain and dangerous to be longer
followed, and Captain Frazier was honest enough to say that he was glad
to stop it, for, being a Yankee, he had never had any heart for it any
way.
When the Mississippi was cleared as far as Port Hudson, and all that
immense cotton country on both sides the river was thrown open to
traffic, Captain Frazier’s owners saw an opportunity to do business in
an honest way and were prompt to improve it. Armed with a pocketful of
credentials one of the firm hastened to New Orleans to obtain a permit
to trade in cotton, and the _West Wind_ was ordered to a neutral port
“for repairs.” When she again appeared on the high seas she did not look
at all like herself, and even her name had been changed. She went to
Portland, Me., and stayed there long enough to get a charter, and then
sailed to Boston and loaded up with commissary stores for Banks’ army.
On the way down she was boarded by more than one officer who had chased
her when she was a blockade runner, and now she was in New Orleans
(safe, too, although surrounded by Federal war ships) and making ready
to take a cargo of cotton to New York.
“I grew ten years older during the twelve months I was engaged in
running the blockade,” said Captain Frazier, in concluding his story,
“but I had lots of fun and saw no end of excitement. And now to come
back to business. Didn’t I hear you say, while you were serving as pilot
and second mate of the _West Wind_, that you have relatives here in
Louisiana and that they raise cotton? I thought so. Well, now, have they
got any that they want to sell?”
“I don’t know; but I can find out. I did not intend to leave this
country without seeing them. How far is Baton Rouge above here?”
“Not far; a hundred and fifty miles, I should say.”
“Well, if I can get there and obtain a pass that will take me through
the lines as far as Mooreville, I can easily find them.”
“You can get there, and I’ll see that you have a bushel of passes if you
need them. If they’ve got any cotton I want it.”
“You can’t have it, captain, for any such price as you have been paying
others. I’ll not stand by and see my uncle gouged in any such way as
that. And I shall hold out for greenbacks, too.”
“Certainly; of course. That’s all right; but as for the price, I guess
you will take what I please to——”
Captain Frazier stopped and looked hard at Jack, who gazed fixedly at
him in return. Each knew what the other was thinking of.
“I don’t know that my uncle Rodney has any cotton,” continued Jack. “But
if he has, you can afford to give him at least twenty-five cents a
pound, greenback money, for it. He is bound to lose his niggers, and, if
he is robbed of his cotton, what will he have to start on when the war
is over?”
“Judging by the way you look out for the pennies you’re as much of a
Yankee as I am,” said Captain Frazier with a laugh. “You’ll swamp my
owners at this rate; but seeing it’s you, I suppose I shall have to
submit to be robbed myself. Now listen while I tell you something.
General Banks came here on purpose to take Port Hudson, Grant is coming
down to capture Vicksburg, and when the Mississippi is open from Memphis
to the sea there’ll be a fortune for the first man who is lucky enough
to get a permit to trade in cotton on the river. My agent, who has an
office ashore and to whom I will introduce you this afternoon, has heard
enough to satisfy him that there are half a million bales concealed in
the woods and swamps along the river, and that the owners, both Union
and rebel, are eager to sell before the Confederate government has a
chance to destroy it; and they would rather sell it for a small sum in
good money than for ten times the amount in such money as they grind out
at Richmond. Now, my idea is to charter a river steamer—a light-draught
one—so that she can run up any small tributary, and put a man with a
business head on board of her with instructions to buy every pound of
cotton he can hear of between this port and Memphis. How would you like
the berth?”
“That depends on whether or not I can be of any service to my uncle and
his friends,” replied Jack. “What is there in it?”
“A big commission or a salary, just as you please.”
The matter wasn’t settled either one way or the other at this interview.
Jack took dinner with Captain Frazier and went ashore with him in the
afternoon to be introduced to the “agent,” who wasn’t an agent at all,
but the head of a branch house which the enterprising Boston firm had
established in New Orleans. He might properly have been called a cotton
factor. When the captain told him who and what Jack was, and what he had
done to make the firm’s first venture in contraband goods successful,
adding that he was going up to Baton Rouge to see whether or not there
was any cotton to be had at or near that place, the agent became
interested, and promised to assist Jack by every means in his power.
“I didn’t see how a civilian could help me along with the military
authorities,” said Jack, in concluding his interesting narrative, “but I
wasn’t long in finding out. The agent, as I shall always speak of him,
gave me a letter to the provost marshal in New Orleans and another to
the officer holding the same position in Baton Rouge, and those letters
made things smooth for me. I supposed, of course, that I should have to
foot it from the city to Mooreville, but the marshal kindly furnished me
with a horse to ride, the only condition imposed being that I should
send it back the first good chance I got. Captain Frazier advanced me
money to buy a citizen’s outfit and pay travelling expenses, and here I
am.”
“And right glad I am to see you,” said Rodney, as Jack settled back in
his chair with an air which seemed to say that he had finished his story
at last. “But you are a slick one.”
“No more so than some other folks,” retorted Jack. “It’s a wonder you
have not brought yourself into serious trouble by your smuggling and
giving aid to escaped prisoners.”
“But, Jack, I assure you that we were in sore need of the things I have
smuggled through the lines,” said Rodney earnestly. “We couldn’t
possibly get along without them.”
“And neither can I get along without making this war refund to my mother
every dollar she is likely to lose by it,” answered his cousin. “The
whole South is going to be impoverished before this thing is over. My
folks had no hand in bringing these troubles upon us, and I don’t mean
that they shall suffer through the folly of a few fanatics, if I can
help it.”
“But, Jack, you will take up with the agent’s offer and put a trading
boat on the river, will you not?” said Rodney.
“Port Hudson and Vicksburg have not been captured yet,” suggested Mrs.
Gray.
“No, but they’re going to be,” said Jack confidently. “And until that
happens I might better be at home than anywhere else, for I can’t do
anything here. If I find that mother and Marcy are getting on all right,
you have my promise that I will return and do my best to get your four
hundred bales to market.”
“Bully for you,” exclaimed Rodney joyfully. “You _are_ just the man we
wanted to see after all. I wish you could take the cotton to-night,
don’t you, father?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will speak to the agent and Captain
Frazier about it, and see if I can induce them to send a boat after your
cotton, so that the _Hyperion_ can take it out on her next trip. I might
have made some such arrangement before I left New Orleans, but I didn’t
know whether or not you had any cotton. What’s become of those
bushwhackers of whom Uncle Rodney has given me an interesting account?”
“Do you mean Lambert and his men? I suppose they are still hiding in the
swamp.”
“Protecting your cotton?” added Jack. “Well, they’ll have to be
‘neutralized,’ as McClellan said of the _Merrimac_. As I understand it,
those bushwhackers don’t mean that you or anybody else shall touch that
cotton unless they can make something by it. It’s a little the queerest
thing I ever heard of, but so far they seem to have been your best
friends.”
“I have been studying about that a good deal,” answered Rodney. “And the
conclusion I have come to is that when we get ready to take charge of
our property, and not before, we’ll have to get rid of Lambert in some
manner. He is the leader, and if he were out of the way I think his men
would scatter. I’ll make a prisoner of him if father will consent.”
“O Rodney, you must not attempt it,” exclaimed his mother. “Lambert has
the reputation of being a dangerous man.”
“I don’t know where or how he came by that reputation,” said the boy
with a smile. “I know he is treacherous, and if I should make the
attempt and fail, I should have to look out for him. He’d as soon
bushwhack me as anybody else. But I don’t intend to fail.”
Sailor Jack’s time was so short, and there were so many other things to
be talked about, that this matter was presently dropped, to be taken up
again and settled at some future day. When Jack started for Baton Rouge
the next morning, with his uncle and cousin for company, the only
conclusion they had been able to reach was that Mr. Gray should hold
fast to his cotton, if he could, until he heard from Jack, who would
forward his letter under cover to the provost marshal in Baton Rouge so
that it would be sure to reach its destination. If it were sent to the
care of Rodney’s Confederate friend, Mr. Martin, the Federal authorities
might not take the trouble to deliver it.
The next step was to obtain the provost marshal’s consent to the
arrangement, and that was easily done. He knew that Jack had risked his
life for the Union, and that his cousin lent a helping hand to escaped
prisoners as often as the opportunity was presented; so he readily
promised to take charge of all the letters that came from the North
addressed to Rodney Gray, and hand them over without reading them. He
gave Jack a pass authorizing him to leave the city on business, and a
note to the quartermaster which brought him a permit to take passage for
New Orleans on one of the steamers attached to the quartermaster’s
department. Rodney and his father saw him off and then turned their
faces toward the hospitable home of Mr. Martin, where they were to
remain until morning.
“It was just no visit at all,” said Rodney in a discouraged tone. “When
Jack said he was a trader and that he had influential friends, I
wouldn’t have taken anything I can think of now for our chances of
getting that cotton off our hands. As the matter stands, everything
depends on ‘ifs.’ _If_ Marcy and his mother are getting on all right,
and _if_ Jack decides to come back and take up with Captain Frazier’s
offer, we shall have a show; otherwise not.”
This state of affairs was galling to Rodney Gray, who could not bear to
be kept in suspense; but exciting events were transpiring up the river
every day, and in trying to keep track of them Rodney lost sight of his
troubles for a brief season. General Grant, who had taken command of the
army that was operating against Vicksburg, had gone to work as if he
were thoroughly in earnest, and there wasn’t a soldier under him who was
more anxious for his complete triumph than was this ex-Confederate hero
of ours. Rodney was soldier enough to know that neither Vicksburg nor
Port Hudson could be taken by assault, and that they could not be
starved into surrender so long as supplies of every sort could be run
into them from the Red River country. They must be surrounded on the
river side as well as on the land side, and Rodney was impatient to
learn what General Grant was going to do about it. Fortunately the
latter had an able assistant in David D. Porter, who had commanded
Farragut’s mortar schooners at New Orleans. He was now an acting rear
admiral and commanded the Mississippi squadron, and most loyally did he
second General Grant in his efforts to capture the rebel stronghold.
The very first move Porter made excited Rodney’s unbounded admiration
and made his heart beat high with hope. He ordered the ram _Queen of the
West_ to run the batteries and destroy the transports that were engaged
in bringing supplies to Vicksburg. Owing to some trouble with her
steering gear it was broad daylight when the ram started on her
dangerous mission, and she was a fair target for the hundred heavy guns
which the rebels had mounted on the bluffs. But she went through,
stopping on the way long enough to make a desperate attempt to sink the
steamer _Vicksburg_, which the rebels, after General Sherman’s defeat at
Chickasaw Bayou, had brought down from the Yazoo to be made into a
gunboat. She failed in that, but ran by the batteries without receiving
much injury, and began operations by capturing a steamer which she kept
with her as tender, and burning three others that were loaded with
provisions.
“If she keeps that up Vicksburg is a goner,” said Rodney to his friend
Ned Griffin.
“One would think you are glad of it,” said the latter. “That’s a pretty
way for a rebel soldier to talk.”
“Rebel soldier no longer,” replied Rodney. “I know when I have had
enough. I’m whipped, and now I want the war to end. It’s bound to come
some of these days, and I wish it might come this minute.”
But unfortunately the _Queen_ did not “keep it up” as Rodney hoped she
would. As long as her commander obeyed orders and devoted his attention
to transports, he was successful; but when he got it into his head that
he could whip a fort with his single wooden vessel, he ruined himself
just as Semmes did when he thought he could beat a war ship in a fair
fight, because he had sunk one weak blockader and burned sixty-five
defenceless merchantmen. Colonel Ellet, who commanded the _Queen_, ran
up Red River, where he captured the _New Era_ with a squad of Texas
soldiers, twenty-eight thousand dollars in Confederate money, and five
thousand bushels of corn; and flushed with victory ran up twenty miles
farther to the fort—and lost his vessel. He escaped with a few of his
men, but the ram fell into the hands of the enemy, who repaired her in
time to assist the _Webb_ in sinking the _Indianola_—a fine new
iron-clad that had run the Vicksburg batteries without receiving a
scratch. Then all the rebels in Rodney’s vicinity were jubilant, and
Rodney himself was correspondingly depressed. On the day the unwelcome
news came Lambert rode into the yard on his way home from Mooreville. He
wasn’t afraid to go there now that there was no conscript officer to
trouble him.
“I heered about it,” he said, in answer to an inquiry from the anxious
Rodney. “We allow to raise that there fine iron-clad, an’ show the Yanks
what sort of fighting she can do when she’s in the hands of men. That’ll
make three good ships we’ll have, an’ with them we can easy clean out
the Yankee fleet at Vicksburg.”
That was just what Rodney knew the rebels would try to do, and their
exploit with the _Arkansas_ proved that they were at all times ready to
take desperate chances. Lambert never would have thought of such a thing
himself, so he must have been talking with someone who was pretty well
informed.
“What do you mean by _we_?” asked Rodney.
“I heered Tom Randolph an’ others among ’em discussin’ the projec’ down
to the store,” replied Lambert.
“Tom Randolph! He’s a pretty fellow to talk of cleaning anybody out.”
“That’s what I thought. He never had no pluck ’ceptin’ on the day he
drawed his sword on me. An’ he never would ’a’ done it if his maw hadn’t
been right there to his elbow. I aint likely to disremember him for
that.”
“But you took an ample revenge by burning his father’s cotton, did you
not? Lambert, that was a cowardly thing for you to do.”
Rodney’s tone was so positive that the ex-Home Guard did not attempt to
deny the accusation. “Who’s been a-carryin’ tales on me?” he demanded.
“I want you to understand that nobody can’t draw a sword on me an’ shake
it in my face too, like Tom Randolph done. I just dropped in to see if
you could let me have a side of bacon this evenin’.”
Without making any reply Rodney arose from his chair and led the way
toward the smoke-house. While he was taking down the bacon Lambert kept
up an incessant talking to prevent him from saying more about Mr.
Randolph’s cotton, and when Rodney handed the meat out of the door he
wheeled his mule and rode quickly away; but he had said enough to make
the boy very uneasy. How long would it be before he would avenge some
fancied insult by touching a match to Mr. Gray’s cotton?
During the next few days Rodney did not do much overseer’s work on his
plantation, and neither did Ned Griffin. To quote from the latter they
became first-class all-around loafers; and so anxious were they to miss
no item of news which might have come down from Vicksburg that they
visited every man in the neighborhood who was known to have made a
recent trip to Baton Rouge or have a late paper in his possession, and
the information they picked up during their rides was far from
encouraging. There was a heavy force of men at work upon the sunken
iron-clad, as well as upon the _Webb_, which had been seriously injured
during her fight with the _Indianola_, and when the latter was raised
and the other fully repaired, the control of the river below Vicksburg
would be fairly within the grasp of the Confederates. If Porter sent a
few more boats below the batteries to be captured, the rebels would soon
have a powerful and almost irresistible fleet; but in this hope they
were destined to be disappointed, as they had been in many others.
It so happened that the next boat to pass under the iron hail of
Vicksburg’s guns was very different from the _Indianola_. The papers
described her as a “turreted monster—the most formidable thing in the
shape of an iron-clad that had ever been seen in the Western waters.” It
was just daylight when the Confederate gunners discovered her moving
slowly down with the current, and the fire that was poured upon her by
almost eighteen miles of batteries ought, by rights, to have sunk
anything in the form of a gunboat that ever floated; but the monster,
with the heavy black smoke rolling from her chimneys, passed safely on
through the whole of it without firing a single gun in reply, and
disappeared from view. Then there was excitement in Vicksburg and in
Richmond too, for the news went to the capital as quickly as the
telegraph could take it. The _Queen of the West_, which now floated the
Confederate flag and had come up to Warrenton to see how her friends
were getting on, turned and took to her heels, and orders were sent down
the river to have the _Indianola_ blown up without delay, so that she
might not be recaptured by this new enemy. The order was obeyed, and the
powerful iron-clad which might have given a better account of herself in
rebel hands than she did while in possession of her lawful owners, was
once more sent to the bottom.
Meanwhile the turreted monster held silently on her way, moving as
rapidly as a five-mile current could take her, and at last grounded on a
sand-bar. Not till then did the rebels awake to the fact that they had
been deceived. When they found courage enough to go aboard of her they
saw, to their amazement and chagrin, that she was not a gunboat at all,
but a coal-barge that had been fitted up to represent one. She had been
set afloat for the purpose of bringing out the whole fire of the
batteries, so that Admiral Porter and General Grant, who had decided to
effect a lodgement below the city, might know just how severe would be
the cannonade that their vessels would be subjected to. Of course the
Confederates were angry over the loss of the _Indianola_, but the
soldiers of Grant’s army, who had thronged the bank on the Louisiana
side and shouted and laughed to see the fun, looked upon the whole
affair as the best kind of a joke. In speaking of it in his report
Admiral Porter said: “An old coal-barge picked up in the river was the
foundation we had to build on. The casemates were made of old boards in
twelve hours, with empty pork-barrels on top of each other for
smoke-stacks and two old canoes for quarter-boats. Her furnaces were
built of mud, and were only intended to make black smoke instead of
steam.” This was the contrivance which frightened the rebels into
destroying the finest gunboat that ever fell into their hands, and which
is known to history as “Porter’s dummy.” The enemy’s chances for getting
control of the river were farther off than before, and Rodney said he
would surely see the day when his cousin’s trading boat would be making
regular trips up and down the Mississippi.
“But do you suppose the rebels will throw no obstacles in your way?”
demanded Ned Griffin. “Do you imagine that they will let you run off
cotton at your pleasure? When Vicksburg and Port Hudson fall the river
will be lined with guerillas, and some day they will burn your trading
boat.”
Taken in connection with what happened afterward these words of Ned’s
seemed almost prophetic.
Having become satisfied that the rebels were not going to build up a
navy in the river as they fondly hoped to do, Rodney began to think more
about his absent cousin and the letters he had promised to write. The
first one that came through the hands of the provost marshal was mailed
at New Orleans and did not contain a word that was encouraging. Captain
Frazier’s agent could not put a boat on the river just now for three
reasons: He couldn’t get a permit, it wouldn’t be a safe venture at this
stage of the game, and he had as much cotton on hand already as he could
attend to.
“That hope is knocked in the head,” said Rodney.
“It is no more than I expected,” replied Mr. Gray, after he had read the
letter. “Saving that cotton is going to be the hardest task you ever set
for yourself. Others have been ruined by this terrible and utterly
useless war, and why should we think to escape? Let us keep our many
blessings constantly in mind, and spend less time in worrying over the
troubles that may come upon us in the future. None of our family have
been killed or sent to prison, and isn’t that something to be thankful
for?”
And Mr. Gray might have added that another thing to be grateful for was
the fact that the family had not become bitter enemies, as was the case
with some whose members had fought under the opposing flags. Jack and
Marcy were strong for the Union, and Rodney had been the hottest kind of
a rebel; but that made no sort of change in the affectionate regard they
had always cherished for one another. Some Union men bushwhacked their
rebel neighbors, and some Confederate guerillas relentlessly persecuted
their Union relatives; but there was no such feeling in the family whose
boys have been the heroes of this series of books. Consequently, when
the next letter came from Jack, written at his home in far-away North
Carolina, and containing the startling intelligence that Marcy Gray had
been forced into the rebel army in spite of all his efforts to keep out
of it, Rodney was as angry a boy as you ever saw, while his father and
mother could hardly have expressed more sorrow if they had heard that
Marcy had been killed. The paragraph in Jack’s letter which contained
the bad news read as follows:
"I almost wish I hadn’t been so anxious to see home and friends once
more, for no news at all is better than the crushing words mother said
to me as soon as I got into the house. I wished I had stayed in the
service; and if I ever go back you may rest assured that I shall fight
harder than I did before to put down this rebellion. Poor Marcy wasn’t
here to welcome me. He was surprised and captured in mother’s presence,
thrust into the common jail at Williamston, and finally shipped south
with a lot of other conscripts, to act as guard at that horrible
prison-pen at Millen, Ga. For months Marcy had been a refugee, living in
the swamp with a few other Union men and boys who hid there to escape
being forced into the army, and until a few weeks ago he beat Beardsley,
Shelby, Dillon, and the rest at every job they tried to put up on him;
but he was caught napping at last, and I never expect to see or hear of
him again. Mother is almost broken-hearted, but being a woman she bears
up under it better than I do. But hasn’t there been a time here since
Marcy was dragged away! The work was done by strange soldiers, but
Marcy’s friends knew who was to blame for it, and took vengeance
immediately. The three men whose names I have mentioned were burned out
so completely that they didn’t have even a nigger cabin to go into, and
two pestiferous little snipes, Tom Allison and Mark Goodwin by name,
whose tongues have kept the settlement in a constant turmoil, were
bushwhacked.
“I will write you fuller particulars after a while, but just now I am
rather ‘shuck up.’ Of course this upsets all my plans; my place is at
home with mother. I inclose Captain Frazier’s card, to which I have
appended his New Orleans address. I told him all about your cotton, and
he and the agent will be only too glad to help you get it to market as
soon as they think it safe to make the attempt. You can trust them, but
be sure and hold out for twenty-five cents, greenback money. Captain
Frazier promised me he would give it.”
The rest of the page was filled with loving messages from Marcy’s
sorrowing mother, and at the bottom was a hasty scrawl that stood for
Sailor Jack’s name.
Mr. Gray brought this letter from Baton Rouge, and finding Rodney at
home with his mother, gave it to him to read aloud. The boy’s voice
became husky before he read half a dozen lines, and Mrs. Gray’s eyes
were filled with tears. When it was finished Rodney handed it back to
his father with the remark:
“I am a good deal of Jack’s opinion that we shall never see or hear of
Marcy again. I know by experience that the petty tyrants we call
officers make the service so hard that a volunteer can scarcely stand
it, and how much mercy do you think they will have on a conscript? They
would as soon kill him as to look at him. No better fellow than Marcy
ever lived, and to think that I—I deserve killing myself.”
Rodney arose hastily from his chair, staggered up to the room he still
called his own, threw himself upon the bed and buried his tear-stained
face in his hands. He had not forgotten, he never would forget, that
episode at the Barrington Military Academy in which Bud Goble and his
minute-men bore prominent parts. Marcy had freely forgiven him for what
he did to bring it about, but it was always fresh in Rodney’s mind. How
terribly the memory of it tortured him now!