SAILOR JACK, THE TRADER.
It was a long time before Marcy Gray could bring himself to believe that
he was not dreaming, and that he would awake to find himself a conscript
guard at the Millen prison pen, but this uncertainty did not prevent him
from making long strides toward recovery. His faithful friend Bowen
declared that he could see him getting well. In less than a week he was
strong enough to ride to Baton Rouge with Rodney. He reported to the
provost marshal, who listened in amazement to his story, and gave him
and Bowen a standing pass in and out of the Union lines. At the end of
two weeks he began to wonder why he did not hear from Jack, and at the
end of three that wished-for individual presented himself in person,
much to the delight of all his relatives. He rode into Rodney’s yard in
company with Mr. Gray, as he had done on a former occasion, and no
sooner did his eyes rest upon Marcy, who sprang down the steps to meet
him, than he began quoting something.
“This accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes,
And wrangle with my reason that persuades me
To any other trust,”
exclaimed Jack, as he swung himself from his mule and clasped his strong
arms about the brother he had never thought to see again. “How are you,
conscript?”
“O Jack!” was all Marcy could say in reply.
“She’s pretty well,” said the sailor, who knew that Marcy would have
asked about his mother if his heart hadn’t been so full, “and has grown
ten years younger since she heard you were safe among friends.”
He shook hands with Rodney, whom he addressed as “Johnny,” and then
walked up to Bowen and fairly doubled him up with one of his sailor
grips.
“You are the man I have to thank for saving my brother’s life, are you?”
said he in a trembling voice. “I don’t know that I shall ever have a
chance to show how grateful I am to you, but if you ever need a friend
you will always find him in Jack Gray.”
It was a happy meeting altogether, and if one might judge by the way he
acted, Sailor Jack himself didn’t know whether he was awake or dreaming.
Marcy’s hands still showed the effect of his unmerited punishment, and
when his big brother looked at them, an expression came upon his face
that might have made Captain Denning a trifle uneasy if he had been
there to see it.
“My orders are to bring you home with me, young man,” said he. “And,
Bowen, you must go, too.”
“Don’t you think it would be dangerous?” inquired Rodney, who had
somehow got it into his head that Marcy would have to live with him as
long as the war continued.
“Union people are safer in our country now than they ever were before,”
answered Jack. “There’s been some shooting done up there since I wrote
to you.”
“O Jack!” exclaimed Marcy. “Were Tom and Mark very badly hurt?”
“Hurt!” repeated the sailor. “Well, I reckon so. They were killed
deader’n herrings, and so were Beardsley, Shelby, and Dillon. Buffum,
the spy who was the means of getting you captured, was hanged, and so
was mother’s old overseer, Hanson. I tell you, Rodney, the country is
full of Union men, and they have been carrying things with a high hand
since Marcy went away.”
“I should think they had,” said the latter, who had never been more
astounded. “I am sorry to hear about Tom and Mark.”
“Well, then, why didn’t they mind their own business? If they’d had a
grain of common sense they would have known that they were bound to get
paid off sooner or later. They brought it on themselves, and it is a
wonder to me that they were not dealt with long before.”
“Jack,” said Marcy suddenly. “You had no hand in it?”
“Not a hand. Not a finger, though there’s no telling what I might have
done if Captain Denning had been there, and I had known that he triced
you up for nothing. Your friends, the refugees, didn’t need any help
from me. There are eighty or a hundred of them now, and they have become
regular guerillas. They are well armed, and when I came away were
talking of raiding Williamston and burning the jail. I think you will be
safe at home, for rebel cavalry don’t scout through our section any
more.”
“How soon do you expect to go?” inquired Rodney.
“Just as soon as I can fill up the _Hyperion’s_ hold,” replied Jack.
“She is due in New Orleans week after next, and I want a boatload of
cotton ready for her when she pulls in to the wharf. So you can trot out
your four hundred bales as soon as you get ready, and I will give you
twenty-five cents greenback money for it. I was dead broke when I was
here before, but I’m wealthy now,” added Jack, pulling from his pocket a
roll of bills that was almost as big as his wrist. “Marcy, that’s
mother’s money.”
“I am overjoyed to hear it,” said the boy.
“And she was overjoyed to get rid of it, for it has been nothing but a
botheration to her ever since she drew it from the bank. Old Morris
showed me where you and he buried it on the night you dug it out of the
cellar wall, and I brought it to New Orleans and exchanged it for
greenbacks at a premium that made me open my eyes. I am first officer of
the _Hyperion_, and in partnership with her owners. I do not expect to
have time to make more than two or three trips on her before the
Mississippi is opened, and then I hope to come back here and run a
trading boat on the river.”
“Where will I be while you are doing that?” inquired Marcy.
“At home with your mother, where all good boys ought to be. You will get
not less than a dollar for your cotton,” said Jack, turning to Rodney,
“perhaps a dollar ten, minus the freight——”
“You don’t mean it!” Rodney almost gasped; for Jack’s matter-of-fact way
of speaking of the fortune that seemed about to drop into his father’s
hands took his breath away.
“What’s the reason I don’t mean it? I hope you don’t imagine that I am
going to let anyone speculate with your property!” exclaimed the sailor.
“Whatever the market price is when your cotton is landed in New York,
that you will get, less the freight the _Hyperion_ will charge you for
taking it there. The twenty-five cents I am authorized to offer you is
business; what you will receive over and above that will be owing to
kinship. Your father and mine were brothers. Now what shall we do with
that man Lambert; send him North for a guerilla or what?”
“I am perfectly willing to buy him off,” said Mr. Gray. “I can afford to
be liberal, for I really believe we would have lost our cotton if it
hadn’t been for him and his ’phantom bushwhackers.’”
“I am afraid he’ll not let you buy him off for any reasonable sum,” said
Rodney.
“You might try him the first chance you get and find out what he is
willing to do,” suggested Jack. “Any way to get rid of him, so that he
will not bushwhack the teamsters we shall send into the woods after the
cotton.”
“I suppose you have a permit this time,” observed Rodney.
“Right from headquarters. We didn’t ask for military protection, and it
isn’t likely that we would have got it if we had; but we are at liberty
to take as many bales of cotton through the lines as we can buy. General
Banks’ signature is on our permit, and he is supreme in this
Department.”
Before Mr. Gray and Jack went home that night a plan of operations had
been decided upon. The former were to engage all the wagons and mules
that could be found in the neighborhood to haul Mr. Gray’s four hundred
bales to Baton Rouge, while Rodney was to seek an interview with Lambert
and “buy him off” if he could. Rodney declared that he had the hardest
part of the work to do, and he set about it, not by going into the woods
to hunt up the ex-Home Guard, but by riding to the city to ask the
advice and assistance of the provost marshal. As he was about to mount
his horse he said to Marcy:
“If that man Lambert comes here while I am gone, please tell him to come
again to-morrow morning, for I want to see him on important business. If
you question him a little, no doubt you will be surprised at the extent
of his information. There’s little goes on in the settlement that he
doesn’t know all about.”
Rodney’s interview with the marshal must have been in the highest degree
satisfactory, for when he came back at night he was laughing all over;
but his cousin Marcy looked troubled.
“He’s been here,” said the latter, without waiting to be questioned,
“and he was as impudent as you please.”
“It’s no more than I expected,” replied Rodney. “What did he say?”
“That them fellers might jest as well give up hirin’ teams to haul out
that cotton till after you had made some sort of a bargain with him,”
answered Marcy.
“That’s all right. Did he say he’d come to-morrow?”
“Yes, he said he would be here to listen to what you have to say, and if
you don’t talk to suit him he’ll start another bonfire.”
“That’s all right,” said Rodney again. “I was afraid he might take it
into his head to start it to-night, in which case I should be under the
disagreeable necessity of bushwhacking him before I slept. But if he
puts it off till to-morrow, he’ll never set any more bonfires. Did you
ever hear of such impudence before?”
For some reason or other Rodney Gray was in excellent spirits that
evening. He did not go to bed until long after midnight, and when he
did, he could not sleep for more than ten minutes at a time. But when
morning came he sobered down, and his face took on the determined
expression that Marcy had so often seen there during those exciting days
at the Barrington Academy, when Dick Graham stole the flag and the
Minute-men burned Unionists out of house and home. Just as they arose
from the breakfast table Ned Griffin threw down the bars and rode into
the yard, and that made four resolute fellows, counting in Charley
Bowen, who were ready to see Lambert and talk to him about Mr. Gray’s
cotton. They all wore sack coats, and in each of the outside pockets was
a loaded revolver.
“I am afraid Lambert will weaken when he sees this crowd,” said Ned.
“Perhaps he’ll not come into the yard at all. Wouldn’t it be a good
scheme for a couple of us to go into the house out of sight?”
“I don’t think it would,” answered Rodney. “Lambert knows how many there
are of us, and if he doesn’t find us all on the porch when he comes his
suspicions will be aroused. He’ll not come alone, you may be certain of
that.”
And sure enough he didn’t. When he rode up to the bars half an hour
later he had two companions with him, and they all carried guns on their
shoulders. There was something aggressive in the way they jerked out the
bars and dropped them on the ground, and Rodney noticed that Lambert did
not take the trouble to put them up behind him as he usually did. This
was the way he took of showing Rodney that he held some power in his
hands, and that he intended to use it for his own personal ends.
“What did I tell you?” said the young master of the plantation, who was
angry in an instant. “He’s brought Moseley and another long-haired chap,
whose name I do not now recall, and thinks he’s going to ride over me
rough-shod. Of course he will demand a private interview, and I will
grant it. All you’ve got to do is to come when you hear me shoot. I’ll
show him that I am in no humor to put up with any more of his nonsense.”
“Don’t run any risks,” cautioned Marcy. “Your mother says that Lambert
is a dangerous man.”
“I’ll prove to you, before this thing is over, that he is the biggest
coward in the Confederacy,” replied Rodney.
The near approach of Lambert and his friends cut short the conversation.
They did not get off their mules, but rode straight up to the porch; and
then Rodney knew why they left the bars down behind them. Their bearing
was insolent, and the first words Lambert uttered were still more so.
“Look a-here, Rodney Gray,” said he, “I’d like to know what them fellers
mean by goin’ round the settlement hirin’ teams to haul that cotton
outen the swamp without sayin’ a word to me about it.”
“I don’t know why you should be consulted,” was the quiet reply. “Since
when has that cotton belonged to you?”
“I’ve had an intrust in it ever sence I began watchin’ it for you an’
your paw,” said Lambert.
“You never had an interest in it, but my father is willing to pay you
for keeping an eye on it, if we can agree upon terms.”
“That’s what I call business,” said Lambert, his face brightening. “How
much you willin’ to give?”
“What are you willing to take?”
“I can’t set no figures till I know how much the cotton is wuth to you,”
said Lambert. “How much you goin’ to get for it?”
“I can’t tell until it is sold in New York,” answered Rodney,
controlling his rising anger with an effort.
“Are you tryin’ to make me b’lieve that you are goin’ to let some
abolitionist run that cotton outen the country without payin’ you a cent
down for it!” shouted Lambert. “I don’t b’lieve a word of it.”
“You needn’t yell so. I am not deaf.”
“Then if you aint you can hear what I’ve got to tell you,” said the man,
raising his voice a full octave higher. “I won’t have no more foolin’.
How much you goin’ to get for that cotton?”
“It’s none of your business. You understand that, I suppose?”
By this time Lambert had succeeded in working himself into a furious
passion, but if he had possessed ordinary common sense he never would
have done it. He thought he could frighten Rodney, but should have known
better. The boy sat tilted back in his chair, with his feet on the
gallery railing and his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, and
his very attitude ought to have warned the ex-Home Guard that he was
treading on dangerous ground, and that there was a point beyond which
Rodney would not be driven. The latter’s reply to his insolent question
capped the climax.
“Whoop!” yelled Lambert, flourishing his rifle above his head. “It aint
none of my business, aint it? I’ll make it my business to make a beggar
of you this very night. I’ll send that cotton of yourn where I sent
Randolph’s to pay that no-account boy of his’n for shakin’ his sword at
me.”
“You have fully made up your mind to burn my father’s cotton, have you?”
said Rodney.
“Yes, I have. It shan’t never be hauled outen them woods less’n I get
fifty cents a pound, cash in hand, for it. That Yankee cousin of yourn
is goin’ to run it up North an’ get a dollar for it. I heered all about
it an’ you needn’t think to fool me. Will you give it or not?”
“I certainly will not.”
“You hearn what he says, boys,” said Lambert to his companions. “I
always said that this was a rich man’s war an’ a poor man’s fight,
didn’t I; an’ now you see it for yourselves, don’t you? Let’s go right
back to the woods an’ set her a-goin’.”
“Bang!” said one of Rodney’s revolvers, and to Marcy’s inexpressible
horror Lambert dropped his rifle and fell headlong from his mule, which
set up a sonorous bray and started for the bars at top speed. “Bang!”
said the other revolver an instant later, and Moseley let go his hold
upon his gun and clung to his mule with both hands. The result of the
next shot was still more terrifying. The third man made a frantic effort
to turn his beast toward the bars; but before he could put him in motion
a bullet passed through the mule’s head, and he and his rider came to
the ground together. It was done in much less time than it takes to tell
it. Rodney’s companions jumped to their feet, but before they could draw
their weapons it was all over.
“Rodney, Rodney, what have you done?” cried Marcy in great alarm.
“I have simply proved my words,” replied his cousin, walking leisurely
down the steps, pushing his revolver into his pocket as he went. “Did I
not say,” he added, picking up the three guns, one after the other, and
firing their contents into the air, “that I would show Lambert to be the
biggest coward in the Confederacy? Get up, here. It’s my turn to be
sassy now. Moseley, dismount.”
[Illustration: RODNEY SURPRISES LAMBERT.]
Moseley obeyed with alacrity, and at the same time Lambert raised
himself on his elbow and gazed about him with a bewildered air. Then he
felt of his head, and examined his hand to see if there was blood upon
it. The third man could not move without assistance, for the mule had
fallen upon his leg and pinned him to the ground.
“Get up,” repeated Rodney, taking Lambert by the arm and helping him
rather roughly to his feet. “Now you and Moseley sit down on the steps
till I am ready to talk to you. Lend a hand here, a couple of you.”
Hardly able to realize what had taken place before their eyes, Rodney’s
companions hastened down the steps to roll the dead mule off his rider,
so that the man could get up. When he was placed upon his feet he was
found to be so weak from fright that he could scarcely stand; so Marcy
and Ned helped him to a seat on the steps. Then they stood back and
looked closely at Lambert and Moseley. Their faces were very white, and
Lambert was covered with dust from head to foot, but there wasn’t the
sign of a wound on either of them. It was bewildering.
“Mister Rodney,” ventured Lambert, when he had made sure that he was
still alive and had the use of his tongue, “I hope you don’t bear me no
grudge for them words I spoke to you a while ago.”
“Oh, no,” replied Rodney cheerfully. “But you have had your say, and I
can’t waste any more time with you now. Moseley, I believe you would be
a harmless sort of rebel if you were out of Lambert’s company.”
“Yes, I would, sah,” whimpered the hog thief. “Every bit of meanness I
have done was all owin’ to him, sah.”
“Jest listen at the fule!” exclaimed Lambert.
“Consequently I think I will let you and your friend here—what’s his
name?”
“Longworth, sah; Joe Longworth,” replied the owner of the name.
“Ah, yes! I know you now. I believe I will let you two off on one
condition. Wait until I get through!” cried Rodney, turning fiercely
upon Lambert, who had made several attempts to interrupt him. “You did
lots of talking a little while back, and now it’s my turn. That
condition is, Moseley, that you take your gang out of the woods and keep
it out from this time on, unless I tell you to take it back.”
“I’ll do it, sah,” said Moseley earnestly. “Sure’s you live——”
“He can’t, Mister Rodney,” exclaimed Lambert. “There aint nobody but me
can do that, kase I’m the captain of ’em.”
“You’re not the captain of them any longer. They will have to elect
someone to take your place, for you are going to start for Baton Rouge
in less than fifteen minutes.”
When Lambert heard this he almost fell off the step on which he was
sitting. Without giving him time to recover himself sufficiently to
utter a protest, Rodney again addressed ex-Lieutenant Moseley.
“If you will do that, you can go to my father after our cotton has been
shipped, and he will give each of you some money,” said Rodney. “I don’t
know how much, but it will be a larger sum than you ever owned before at
one time. It will be good money, too.”
“Say, Mister Rodney,” faltered Lambert, “what’s the reason I can’t have
a share?”
“But if you don’t do it,” continued Rodney, “if you interfere in any way
with the teamsters who will go into the swamp to-morrow to haul that
cotton out, the last one of you will be hunted down and shot, or sent to
a Northern prison to keep company with Lambert. How many did you leave
behind when you came here?”
“Four, sah,” replied Moseley.
“Only seven of you altogether!” exclaimed Rodney. “Well, I think I can
promise you a hundred dollars apiece in greenbacks, and that will be
equal to six or eight hundred dollars in Confederate scrip.”
Moseley’s eyes glistened and so did Longworth’s; but Lambert’s grew dim
with tears, and his face was a sight to behold. The man had less courage
than Rodney gave him credit for, and the boy wondered what his mother
would think of this “dangerous” person if she could see him now. He
couldn’t even talk, and Rodney was glad of it, for he wanted to finish
his instructions to Moseley and take down the names of his companions
without being interrupted.
“Longworth, is that your beast?” said Rodney, with a nod toward the dead
mule. “I am sorry I had to shoot him, and I shouldn’t have done it if
you hadn’t tried to run off. When you are ready to come out of the woods
and put in a crop, I will give you another and better one to take his
place; but I’ll not furnish you anything to ride as long as you are
playing bushwhacker.”
After a little more conversation, and before Lambert had recovered from
the stupor into which he had been thrown by Rodney’s ominous words,
Moseley and Longworth started for the swamp to spread consternation
among their companions by telling what a desperate fighter the young
overseer was when aroused, and what terrible things he had threatened to
do if his demands were not complied with, while Rodney and his cousin
went into the house, leaving Ned and Bowen to watch the prisoner.
“I don’t see how you could bring yourself to do it,” said Marcy.
“Do it! Do what?” replied Rodney innocently.
“I thought sure you had killed Lambert and wounded Moseley, and when I
saw Longworth come to the ground as if he had been struck by
lightning——”
“That’s nothing,” laughed Rodney. “If you could see a platoon of cavalry
floored as quickly as he was, perhaps you would open your eyes. As to
Lambert, I didn’t shoot within a foot of his head, although I shoved my
revolver so close to his face that the smoke went into his eyes and
blinded him for a minute or two. I shot even wider of the mark when I
pulled on Moseley, and no doubt he dropped his gun because Lambert did.
It was not my intention to touch either one of them. I thought it would
be a good plan to let them understand who they were fooling with and
what I could do if I set about it. But I meant to hit that mule. Now,
will you ride to Baton Rouge with me?”
“Of course I will; but you are not going to send Lambert up North?”
“That is a matter with which I have nothing to do, but beyond a doubt
it’s where Lambert will bring up before he is many weeks older. As soon
as it becomes known that he is in the hands of the Yanks, the Union
people he persecuted so outrageously, while Tom Randolph was captain of
the Home Guards, will prefer charges against him, and that will be bad
for Lambert.”
“I wish you thought it safe to let him go,” said Marcy, who could not
bear to see anyone in trouble.
“But I don’t, you see. Of course he would make all sorts of promises,
but he’d burn that cotton of ours as soon as he could get to it.”
When the events we have just described became known in the settlement,
they created almost as much excitement as did the news of the firing
upon Sumter, but of course it was a different sort of excitement. The
Union men whom Lambert had robbed and abused went into the city by
dozens to bear testimony against him, and then hastened home to repair
their wagons and harness so that they could earn the four dollars a day,
“greenback money,” that Sailor Jack offered them for hauling out his
uncle’s cotton. Everyone who had cotton to sell and teams for hire, with
one exception, was happy; and that exception was Mr. Randolph, who was
the most miserable man in the State. He had not only lost the most of
his cotton (he had about twenty bales that Jack said he would buy), but
since Lambert’s arrest he had learned why he lost it. That was a matter
which Tom desired above all things to keep from his father’s knowledge;
but Lambert had told all he knew about him in the hope that, if he were
sent to prison, his old captain would have to go with him. Tom himself
had some fears on this score, but thus far no one in the settlement had
thought it worth while to trouble him. Such treatment as that made Tom
angry.
“Nobody pays any more attention to me than if I was a stump-tailed
yellow dog,” he complained to his mother, who was the only friend he had
in the world. “Father will scarcely speak when I am around, and when I
go to town, the men who used to go out of their way to salute me and say
‘Good-morning, Captain Randolph,’ won’t look at me. It wasn’t so when we
were rich.”
“That is true,” assented his mother. “I have always heard it said that
one’s pocket-book is one’s best friend, and I believe it. Tommy, don’t
you think, if you could fix up a wagon and earn a little money, it would
be better than idling away your time doing nothing?”
“And drive crow-bait mules and work for Rodney Gray?” exclaimed Tom.
“Mother, I am surprised at you. Think what a comedown that would be for
one who has been a captain in the Confederate service!”
Mrs. Randolph did not say that it would have been a good thing for the
captain if he had been content to remain a civilian, but she thought so.
There were others in the neighborhood who had never performed any manual
labor, rich planters before the war, who had nothing to do but spend the
money their slaves made for them, but they did not talk as Tom did. They
took off their coats and went to work, and never stopped to see whether
the shoulder that was under the opposite side of a cotton bale belonged
to a white man or a negro. Rodney Gray, who superintended the work while
Sailor Jack went to New Orleans to charter a river steamer, paid them
their greenbacks every night, and the planters took them home and hid
them for fear that a squad of rebel cavalry might make a night raid into
the settlement and steal them. Jack did not ask for military protection,
but he had it, for every day or two a company of Federal troopers
galloped through the country, ready to do battle with any “Johnnies” who
might try to interfere with the work. Rodney was always glad to see
them. He knew that the Confederate authorities would not permit that
cotton to be shipped if they could prevent it, and he never left it
unguarded. Moseley and his five companions were in his pay, and earned
two dollars a night by holding themselves ready at all times to drive
off any marauders who might try to burn it. On one memorable night they
proved their worth and earned five times that amount. Moseley, who
seemed to have grown several inches taller since Rodney last saw him,
proudly reported that he had had a regular pitched battle about three
o’clock that morning, and that he had driven the enemy from the field in
such confusion that they left their wounded behind them. And, what was
more to the point, he produced three injured rebels to show that he told
nothing but the truth.
By the time Sailor Jack returned with the steamer he had chartered, Mr.
Gray’s cotton was all on the levee at Baton Rouge awaiting shipment to
New Orleans, and Rodney’s teams were hard at work hauling in Mr.
Walker’s. By this time, too, everyone in the southwestern part of the
State knew what was going on at Mooreville, and Union men and rebels,
living as far away as the Pearl River bottoms, came to Jack and begged,
with tears in their eyes, that he would take their cotton also and save
them from utter ruin. Jack assured them that he would be glad to buy
every bale, provided they would put it where he could get hold of it
without running the risk of being bushwhacked; but there was the
trouble. The guerillas became very active all on a sudden, and almost
every morning someone would report to Rodney that he “seen a light on
the clouds over that-a-way, and jedged that some poor chap had been
losin’ cotton the night afore.” On one or two occasions Rodney saw such
lights on the sky, and if his heart was filled with sympathy for the
planter who was being ruined by the wanton destruction of his property,
there was still room enough in it for gratitude to his sailor cousin,
through whose manœuvring his father had been saved from a similar
fate.
Jack Gray was a “hustler,” and he “hustled” his men to such good purpose
that in ten days more his chartered steamer was loaded to her guards,
and Mr. Gray and a few of his neighbors were rich and happy, while
Rodney was very miserable and unhappy, for his cousin and Charley Bowen
were going away. Jack had been told to take Marcy home with him, and
Jack’s rule was to obey orders if he broke owners. Anxious to remain
with Marcy as long as he could, Rodney accompanied him to New Orleans
and saw his father’s cotton loaded into the _Hyperion’s_ hold. A few
days afterward he waved his farewell to Marcy as the swift vessel bore
him down the river, and then turned his face homeward to wait for Grant
and Banks to open the Mississippi. But his patience was sadly tested,
for it was not until July 4 that Grant’s army marched into Vicksburg.
After an active campaign of eighty days the modest man who afterward
commanded all the Union armies “gained one of the most important and
stupendous victories of the war,” inflicting upon the enemy a loss of
ten thousand in killed and wounded, capturing twenty-seven thousand
prisoners, two hundred guns, and small arms and munitions of war
sufficient for an army of sixty thousand men. General Banks took
possession of Port Hudson on the 9th, and no Northern boy shouted louder
than Rodney Gray did when he heard of it. The river was open at last,
and Jack Gray and his trading boat could make their appearance as soon
as they pleased.
But this was not all the glorious news that Rodney heard about that
time. On the 3d of July, at Cemetery Ridge in far-off Pennsylvania,
there had been a desperate charge of fifteen thousand men and a bloody
repulse that “marked the culmination of the Confederate power.” When
General Lee saw Pickett’s lines and Anderson’s fading away before the
terrible fire of the Union infantry, he also saw “the fading away of all
hope of recognition by the government of Great Britain. The iron-clad
war vessels, constructed with Confederate money by British ship-builders
and intended for the dispersion of the Union fleets blockading
Wilmington and Charleston, and which were supposed to be powerful enough
to send the monitors, one by one, to the bottom of the sea, were
prevented from leaving English ports by order of the British
government”; but if Pickett’s charge had been successful, those
iron-clads would have sailed in less than a week, and France and
England, who were waiting to see what would come of the invasion of
Pennsylvania, would have recognized the Confederacy. It is no wonder
that General Lee’s soldiers fought hard for victory when they knew there
was so much depending upon it. The boys in blue who whipped them at
Cemetery Ridge are deserving of all honor.
We must not forget to say that before these things happened Sailor Jack
ran up from New Orleans to tell what he had done with Marcy, and to make
a settlement with his uncle.
“I’ve made a successful trip,” said he gleefully, “and, Uncle Rodney,
you have that much to your credit in the Chemical Bank of New York.”
As he said this he handed Mr. Gray a certificate of deposit calling for
a sum of money so large that Rodney opened his eyes in amazement.
“Of course I had to take Marcy to New York with me,” continued Jack,
“but two days after we got there Captain Frazier found a Union storeship
that was about to sail with provisions for the blockading fleet; and as
she had a lot of mail and stuff aboard for Captain Flusser, whom I knew
to be serving on the _Miami_ in Albemarle Sound, I managed to obtain
permission for Marcy to take passage on her, believing that if he could
reach the _Miami_ he could also reach Plymouth, and from there it would
be easy for him to get home. I expect to find a letter from him when I
return to New York, and he also promised to write you in care of the
provost marshal at Baton Rouge.”
There was one thing Jack did before he went back to New Orleans that at
first disgusted Rodney Gray, though he was afterward very glad of it. He
paid over to Mr. Randolph every dollar his twenty bales sold for in New
York, not even deducting the _Hyperion’s_ freight bill, so that
unfortunate gentleman was not quite as badly off as he thought. He had a
little money with which to make a new start when the war ended.