Part 9 (1/2)
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 pa.s.sed, 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 gla.s.s. Marcy thought there was good cause for watchfulness and anxiety. In the first place, the Bahama Islands, of which Na.s.sau, in the Island of New Providence, was the princ.i.p.al 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 das.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 Na.s.sau. 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 Na.s.sau 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-sh.e.l.ls, and was the home of a few fisherman and wreckers; this was all Marcy thought there was of Na.s.sau, 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 Na.s.sau.” When President Lincoln's proclamation, announcing the blockade of all the Confederate ports was issued, Na.s.sau 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 a.s.sisting 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 s.h.i.+pped from Europe in neutral vessels; and being consigned to a neutral port (for Na.s.sau belonged to England), they were in no danger of being captured by our war s.h.i.+ps 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 pa.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e 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 'longsh.o.r.emen, 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 s.h.i.+p under the Confederate flag,” said he. ”But what has England got against the United States, anyway?”