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Harry Castlemon

Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

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The last of the “Louisiana.”

CASTLEMON’S WAR SERIES.

Sailor Jack, the Trader

BY

HARRY CASTLEMON,

AUTHOR OF “GUNBOAT SERIES,” “ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES,”

“FOREST AND STREAM SERIES,” ETC., ETC.

Four Illustrations by Geo. G. White.

PHILADELPHIA:

PORTER & COATES.

Copyright, 1893,

BY

PORTER & COATES

CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER PAGE

I.

Tom Randolph, Conscript

,

1

II.

Lambert’s Signal-Fire

,

29

III.

Mr. Randolph Carries Tales

,

59

IV.

The Phantom Bushwhackers

,

86

V.

The Cotton Thieves

,

114

VI.

The Man He Wanted to See

,

141

VII.

Sailor Jack in Action

,

168

VIII.

Bad News from Marcy

,

195

IX.

Rodney is Astonished

,

222

X.

Mark Goodwin’s Plan

,

247

XI.

Ben Makes a Failure

,

273

XII.

Surprised and Captured

,

302

XIII.

In Williamston Jail

,

326

XIV.

The Prison Pen

,

350

XV.

On Account of the Dead Line

,

375

XVI.

Sailor Jack, the Trader

,

403

XVII.

Conclusion

,

435

SAILOR JACK, THE TRADER.

CHAPTER I.
TOM RANDOLPH, CONSCRIPT.

“Well, by gum! Am I dreamin’? Is this Tom Randolph or his hant?”

“I don’t wonder that you are surprised. It’s Tom Randolph easy enough, though I can hardly believe it myself when I look in the glass. There isn’t a nigger in the settlement that isn’t better clad and better mounted than I am.”

“Well, I have seen you when you looked a trifle pearter, that’s a fact.”

“And what brought me to this? The Yankees and their cowardly sympathizers. I don’t blame the boys in blue so much, for brave soldiers always respect one another, even though their sense of duty compels them to fight under different flags; but the traitors we have right here among us are too mean to be of any use. And the meanest one among them is Rodney Gray.”

The first speaker was Lieutenant Lambert, who, by his zealous efforts to serve the cause of the South, brought about the bombardment of Baton Rouge, and the person whom he addressed was the redoubtable Captain Tom himself, who had just returned to Mooreville after undergoing two months’ military discipline at Camp Pinckney.

The last time we saw these two worthies was shortly after the Confederate General Breckenridge made his unsuccessful attempt to capture Baton Rouge, and the conscripting officer, Captain Roach, disappeared so completely that no one had ever heard a word of him since, and the veteran Major Morgan, backed by fifty soldiers who hated all Home Guards and other skulkers as cordially as they hated the Yankees, came to take his place. Knowing that Captain Roach had been very remiss in his duty, that he had spent more time in visiting and eating good dinners than he had in sending conscripts to the army, Major Morgan hardly gave himself time to take possession of the office in Kimberley’s store before he declared that that sort of work was going to cease entirely, and that everyone in his district who was liable to military duty, Home Guards as well as civilians, must start for the camp of instruction at once or be taken there by force. The news spread rapidly, and in a very few hours everyone in the settlement had heard it. The wounded and disabled veterans of the Army of the Centre, of whom there were a goodly number in the neighborhood, were overjoyed to learn that at last there was a man in the conscripting office who could not be trifled with, and some of the civilians, who came under the exemption clause of the Conscription Act, secretly cherished the hope that Captain Tom and his first lieutenant might be sent to serve under Bragg, who did not scruple to shoot his soldiers for the most trivial offences.

As to Tom and his Home Guards, they did not at first pay much attention to the major’s threats. It was right that civilians should be forced to shoulder muskets, since they would not do it of their own free will, but as for them, they were State troops, and the government at Richmond could not order them around as it pleased. Besides, they had great confidence in Mrs. Randolph’s powers of persuasion. She would never permit her son to go into the army, and having managed Captain Roach pretty near as she pleased, the Home Guards did not see why she could not manage Major Morgan as well; but when it became noised abroad that the latter had curtly refused Mrs. Randolph’s invitation to dinner, intimating that he was not ordered to Mooreville to waste his time in visiting and nonsense, they were terribly frightened, and demanded that Captain Tom should “see them through.” When they enlisted in his company, he promised to stand between them and the Confederate authorities, and now was the time for him to make that promise good; but Tom was as badly frightened as they were, and did not know what to do. When his mother suggested that it might be well for him to put his commission in his pocket, and ride to Mooreville and talk the matter over with the major, Tom almost went frantic.

“Go down there and face that despot alone,” he exclaimed, “while he has fifty veterans at his back to obey his slightest wish? I’d about as soon be shot and have done with it. Besides, what have I got to ride? The Yankees have stolen me afoot.”

Captain Tom knew well enough that he was not telling the truth. It wasn’t Yankees who “stole him afoot,” but men who wore the same kind of uniform he did. You will remember that we compared the short visit of Breckenridge’s army to a plague of locusts. Everything in the shape of eatables in and around Mooreville, as well as some articles of value, disappeared and were never heard of afterward; and among those articles of value were several fine horses, Tom Randolph’s being one of the first to turn up missing. His expensive saddle and bridle disappeared at the same time, and now, if Tom wanted to go anywhere, he was obliged to walk or ride a plough mule bare-back, which was harrowing to his feelings. He wouldn’t appear before a Confederate officer of rank in any such style as that, he said, and that was all there was about it. But, as it happened, the conscripting officer had a word to say on that point. On the morning following his arrival in the village a couple of strange troopers galloped into Mr. Randolph’s front yard and drew up at the steps with a jerk. Captain Tom’s heart sank when he saw them coming, for something told him that they were after him and nobody else; and paying no heed to the earnest entreaties of his mother, who assured him that he might as well face them one time as another, for he could not save himself by flight, he disappeared like a shot through the nearest door, leaving her to explain his absence in any way she thought proper. But after taking a second look at the unwelcome visitors, Mrs. Randolph knew it would be of no use to try to shield the timid Home Guard. The trooper who ascended the steps, leaving his comrade to hold his horse, was a rough-looking fellow, as well he might be, for he had seen hard service. The little pieces of metal on his huge Texas spurs tinkled musically, his heavy cavalry sabre clanked against his heels as he walked, and Mrs. Randolph thought there was something threatening in the sound. He lifted his cap respectfully, but said in a brisk business tone:

“I’d like to see Tom Randolph, if you please.”

“Do you mean Captain Randolph?” corrected the lady.

“No, ma’am. He was given to me as plain Tom Randolph, and that is the only name I know him by. I’d like to see him, if you please.”

“Will you step in while I go and find him?”

“Thank you, no. I have no time to sit down. I am in a great hurry.”

“You can spare a moment to tell me, his mother, what you are going to do with him, can you not?”

“All I can say is that the major wants to see him at once,” was the short answer.

“Do you know what the major wants of him, so that I can explain——”

“Pardon me if I say that no explanations are necessary. It is enough for him to know that Major Morgan wants to see him without a moment’s delay.”

The tone in which the words were spoken satisfied Mrs. Randolph that the impatient trooper could not be put off any longer, so she turned about and went into the house. She knew that Tom had gone straight to her room, and when she tried the door she found that he had locked himself in.

“Who’s there?” demanded a husky voice from the inside.

“It is I, my dear, and I am alone,” was the reply. “Let me in at once. Now, call all your courage to your aid, and show yourself the brave soldier you were on the night you knocked that Yankee sentinel down with the butt of a musket and escaped being sent to a Northern prison-pen,” she continued, as she slipped through the half open door, which was quickly closed and locked behind her. “Major Morgan wants to see you at his office, and, my dear, you had better go at once. The man at the door will not wait much longer.”

“I don’t care if he won’t,” shouted Captain Tom, who was terribly alarmed. “If he gets tired of standing there, let him go back where he came from and tell that major that I—what business has that fellow got out there?”

Tom chanced to look through the window while he was talking, and when he saw one of the troopers ride down the carriage-way as if he were going to the rear of the house, it flashed upon him that the man was going there to watch the back door. At the same moment the jingling of spurs and the rattling of a sabre were heard in the next room, the door knob was tried by a strong hand, and something that might have been the toe of a heavy boot was propelled with considerable force against the door itself.

“Open up here,” commanded a stern voice on the other side. “Do it at once, or I shall be obliged to force an entrance.”

This threat brought Captain Tom to his senses. In a second the door was unlocked and opened, and the soldier stepped into the room.

“By what right does Major Morgan——” began Tom.

“I don’t know a thing about it,” was the quick reply. “It is no part of my duty to inquire into my superior’s private affairs. All I can say is that I am commanded to bring Tom Randolph before him without loss of time. You are Tom Randolph, I take it. Then saddle up and come with me.”

“But the Yankees stole my horse and I have nothing to ride except a mule,” whined Tom.

“Then ride the mule or come afoot. Make up your mind to something, for I am going to start in half a minute by the watch.”

“You will give my son time to exchange his citizen’s clothes for his captain’s uniform, of course,” ventured Mrs. Randolph.

“Sorry I haven’t an instant to wait, but the color of his clothes will make no sort of difference to Major Morgan,” was the reply. “Now then, will you order up that mule, or walk, or ride double with my man?”

“Are you an officer?” faltered Tom.

“Not much of one—only a captain.”

“Well, that puts a different look on the matter entirely,” said Tom, who up to this time thought he was being ordered around by a private soldier. “Since you are an officer I expect to receive an officer’s treatment from you, and I don’t wish to be addressed——”

“That’s all right. But hurry up, for the time is precious.”

Being satisfied at last that his meeting with the dreaded conscript officer could not be delayed any longer, Captain Tom hastened to his room after his commission, while his mother sent a darky to the stable-yard to bring up the solitary mule that had been left there when the few remaining field-hands went to work in the morning. And a very sorry-looking beast it proved to be when it was led to the door—too decrepit to work, and so weak with age that it fairly staggered as Tom threw his weight upon the sheepskin which the thoughtful darky had placed on the animal’s back to serve in lieu of a saddle. A sorry picture Captain Tom made, too, when he was mounted; but he had no choice between going that way and riding double with a private, and that was a thing he could not bring himself to do.

While they were on their way to town Captain Tom made several fruitless attempts to induce his captors—for that was just what they were—to give him some idea of what he might expect when he presented himself before the major; but although he could not prevail upon them to say a word on that subject, he was able to make a pretty shrewd guess as to the nature of the business in hand, and if he had known that he was going to prison for a long term of years he could not have felt so utterly wretched and disheartened.

“If I were going to jail I might have a chance to get pardoned out,” thought Tom, “but the only way to get out of the army is to be killed or have an arm or leg shot off. I’d be perfectly willing to go if Jeff Davis and all his Cabinet could be compelled to go too. I’m afraid I am in for trouble this time, sure.”

If Captain Tom had any lingering doubts on this point they were dispelled in less than half a minute after he entered the enrolling office. He had never before met the grizzly veteran who sat at Captain Roach’s desk with a multitude of papers before him, and when their short interview was ended Captain Tom hoped from the bottom of his heart that he might never meet him again. He proved to be just what he looked—a thorough soldier, who had come there with the determination to perform his disagreeable duty without fear or favor. Every man in the office was a stranger to Tom. There were stacks of carbines and cavalry sabres in all the corners, horses saddled and bridled were hitched to the rack in front of the door, and there were a few tanned and weather-beaten soldiers standing around ready to start at the word, but there was not a Home Guard to be seen.

“This is Tom Randolph, sir,” was the way in which one of the guards brought the new-comer to the notice of the conscript officer. “Don’t sit down,” he added a moment later, as Tom drew a chair toward him. “Take off your hat.”

Captain Randolph was amazed, for this was not the way he had always been treated in that office. Hitherto he had been a privileged character, and had had as much to say as Captain Roach himself; but now things were changed, and for the first time in his life Tom was made to see that he was not of so much importance in the world as he had supposed himself to be. He took off his hat, but noticed that the soldiers in the room did not remove theirs, and that nettled him. So did the manner in which the major acknowledged the introduction, if such it could be called. He did not offer to shake hands as Tom thought he would, but merely looked over the top of his spectacles for a moment. Then he pulled a sheet of paper toward him, ran his finger down the list of names written on it until he had found the one he wanted, and made a short entry opposite to it; after which he pushed away the paper and said:

“Report at one o’clock this afternoon. That’s all.”

“But, major,” Tom almost gasped, “what am I to report for?”

“What for? Why, marching orders, of course.”

“Well, will you tell me where I am to march?”

“Along the road that leads to the camp of instruction. Where else should a recruit march to, I’d like to know. You’re conscripted.”

“But, major,” protested Tom, drawing forth an official envelope with hands that trembled so violently that he could scarcely control them, “I really don’t see how you can conscript me. I am a captain in the State troops, and there’s my commission from the governor.”

“It isn’t worth straws,” answered the major, snapping his fingers in the air. “Don’t want to see it. Besides, you have resigned.”

“But my resignation has not been accepted.”

“That doesn’t matter. It will be, for there are no such things as State troops now, I am happy to say. You’re liable to military duty easy enough, and—that’s all.”

“I retain my rank, don’t I, sir?” said Tom.

It was astonishing what an effect this simple question had upon the occupants of the room. Some quickly turned their faces to the wall, others tiptoed through the nearest doors, and all shook with suppressed merriment. The major jerked his spectacles off his nose, looked hard at Tom to see if he were really in earnest, and cleared his throat before he replied:

“No, sir; you will begin as Private Randolph, but will be given every opportunity to show what you are made of, and to win a commission that is worth something more than the paper it happens to be written on. Don’t worry about that. Well, sergeant, where are the men I ordered you to bring before me?”

Hardly able to tell whether he was awake or dreaming, Tom Randolph yielded to the friendly hand that was laid upon his arm, and suffered himself to be led away from the desk, his place being immediately filled by four brawny soldiers, who raised their hands with a military salute. The first words one of them spoke aroused Tom from his stupor and interested him.

“We didn’t find Lambert and Moseley to home, sir. They must have had warnin’, I reckon, for they’ve took to the bresh.”

“They needn’t think to escape me by resorting to any such trick as that,” said the major grimly. “They owe a duty to their country in this hour of her peril, and they’ve got to do it. I’ll have a detail watch their houses night and day till they come back.”

Tom Randolph could hardly believe that the soldier who laid his hand upon his arm and conducted him to a remote corner of the room, so that they could talk without danger of being overheard, was the same captain who had been so impatient and peremptory with him and his mother a short time before, but such was the fact. Having performed his duty and brought his prisoner to the office, as he had been told to do, the captain had thrown off his soldier airs and was as jolly and friendly a fellow as one would care to meet.

“You see you are going to have good company while you are in camp,” said he.

“I don’t know what you call good company,” snarled Tom. “Lambert is nothing more than a common overseer, while Moseley is a chicken and hog thief. Good company, indeed!”

“But we heard that they are officers in your company of Home Guards,” said the captain in a surprised tone.

“They were chosen against my earnest protest,” replied Tom, “but they have never been commissioned by the governor. Their election was not legal, and so I didn’t report it. But, captain, I don’t think your major has any authority to ride over the governor in this rough way.”

“Hasn’t he a right to conscript everyone who does not come under the exemption clause?” answered the captain. “If you have read that act I will venture to say that you did not see the words ‘Home Guards’ in it. Come now.”

“But I am my father’s overseer,” said Tom, switching off on another track.

“Since when?”

“Since long before Breckenridge made his attack on Baton Rouge.”

“Where are you employed?”

“On the home plantation.”

“Your father doesn’t need two overseers on the home plantation, does he? He has claimed exemption for—what’s his name?—Larkin.”

“And didn’t he say a word about me?”

“The records of the office don’t show it. Now let me tell you something. If your father wants to claim exemption for you instead of Larkin no doubt he can manage it with General Ruggles, who is in command at Camp Pinckney. Major Morgan has no authority to act in such cases. Just now your duty is to go home and make ready to report at one o’clock sharp. Don’t be a second behind time unless you want to get the rough side of the major’s tongue.”

“What shall I do to get ready?”

“Why, pack up a suit or two of your strongest clothes, an extra pair of shoes and stockings, and a few blankets, which I assure you will come handy for shelter tents when you take the field.”

“And you don’t think of any way in which I can get out of it?” said Tom in a choking voice.

“Oh, no. That’s a dead open and shut. You’ve got to go to camp and stay there while your friends are working to get you out, if that is what you want them to do. But I wouldn’t let them make any move in that direction if I were you. Why don’t you go with us and make a man of yourself? We are whipping the Yankees right along, and you will have plenty of chances to distinguish yourself. We’re bound to gain our independence, and don’t you want to be able to say that you had a hand in it?”

The captain’s earnest words did not send any thrill of patriotism into the heart of Tom Randolph, who just then wished that the Yankees would sweep through Mooreville in irresistible numbers, put an end to the war in a moment, and so keep him from going to Camp Pinckney. He turned sorrowfully away from the captain, who had really tried to befriend him by giving what he thought to be good advice, mounted his aged mule, and set out for home. His mother’s face brightened when he dismounted at the foot of the steps, but fell instantly when Tom told her that she had better take a good long look at him while she had the chance, for after that day was past she would never see him again. Of course there was mourning in that house when he told his story, and the gloom that rested there was but partially dispelled by Mr. Randolph’s promise to discharge Larkin without loss of time and claim exemption for Tom in his stead.

“If you could do it this minute it would not keep me from going to the camp of instruction,” whined Tom, “for the major has no authority to do anything but conscript everybody he can get his hands on.”

“Has he warned Ned Griffin and Rodney Gray?” inquired Mrs. Randolph.

“That’s so,” exclaimed Tom angrily. “What a dunce I was not to speak to the captain about those fellows! But I was so taken up with my own affairs that I never once thought of it. However, I’ll think of it when I go down to the office at one o’clock, I bet you. And, father, if you get on the track of Lambert and Moseley, don’t fail to let the major know it. If I’ve got to be disgraced I want them to keep me company.”

“I will bear it in mind,” answered Mr. Randolph. “And since one o’clock isn’t so very far off, hadn’t you better get ready?”

The conscript thought this a very heartless suggestion and so did his mother; but they could not deny that there was reason in it, and so preparations for Tom’s departure were made at once. The parting which took place an hour or so later was a tearful one on Tom’s part as well as his mother’s, but there was not very much sorrow exhibited by the black servants who crowded into the dining-room to shake his hand, as they were in duty bound to do, and Tom made the mental resolution that, when he returned from Camp Pinckney to take his place as overseer on the plantation, he would see them well paid for their indifference. He rode in his mother’s carriage this time, accompanied by his father and a bundle of things that would have filled a soldier’s knapsack to overflowing. When the carriage turned into the street that ran past Kimberley’s store, Tom thrust his head out of the window, but instantly pulled it in again to say, while tears of vexation filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks:

“There’s a bigger crowd of people in front of the office than I ever saw before. No doubt some of them will be glad to know I have been conscripted; but if you have the luck I am sure you will have, I shall be back to turn the laugh on them before many days have passed over my head. Just look, father, and remember the name of every one who has a slighting word or glance for me, so that I may settle with him at some future time. I hope Rodney and Ned Griffin are there.”

“You’ve got your wish,” replied Mr. Randolph, after he had run his eye over the crowd, which extended clear across the street to the hitching-rack. “Rodney and Ned are there, but they seem to be standing on the outskirts.”

Tom mastered up courage enough to look again, and then he saw what his father meant by “the outskirts.” There were three distinct classes of people in that gathering. In the middle of the crowd and in front of the office stood two score conscripts, who were closely guarded by half as many of Major Morgan’s veterans. Some of the conscripts seemed resolved to make the best of the situation, and joked and laughed with their friends and relatives who had assembled to see them off, and who formed the third class that stood outside the guards; but Tom noticed that most of their number looked very unhappy indeed. Tom did not see Rodney and Ned, but he discovered several disabled veterans of Bragg’s army with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, and they in turn discovered him and sent up a shout of welcome.

“Hey-youp! Here comes another, and I do think in my soul it’s Captain Tommy Randolph,” exclaimed one. “It’s him, for I know that there kerridge.”

“An’ they tell me that you might jest as well be in the army to onct as to be in that camp,” chimed in a second veteran. “There aint no sich thing as gettin’ away when they get a grip onto you.”

“Not by no means,” cried a third. “Kase why, don’t you know that they keep a pack of nigger hound dogs there that aint got nothin’ in the wide world to do but jest chase deserters?”

The tone in which the taunting words were uttered was highly exasperating to Tom, whose face grew red with anger.

“I wouldn’t mind them,” said his father soothingly. “That’s only soldiers’ fun. They don’t mean anything by it.”

“I’ll try not to mind them now, but I’ll get even with every one of them when I come back,” said Tom savagely.

Stepping out of the carriage, and showing himself to that little mob of laughing, jeering soldiers, was one of the most trying ordeals that Tom Randolph ever passed through, but there was no way to escape it. As he hurried through their ranks toward the guards, who stood aside to let him pass, they sent a few more words of advice and encouragement after him.

“Where’s all your purty clothes, Tommy?” inquired one. “Go home to onct an’ get ’em. If you don’t, them fule Yanks will think you are nothin’ but a dog-gone private.”

“Don’t listen to him, Tommy,” said another. “The Yanks always pick for officers in battle, an’ they’re dead shots, I tell you.”

“You’re mighty right,” chorused a dozen voices. “I never did see anybody who could shoot like them Yanks. I’m glad I aint got to face ’em agin, tell your folks. I wouldn’t do it for all the money the Confedrit gov’ment is worth.”

“It’s a disgrace the way those fellows are allowed to go on,” said Tom to the first soldier he met when he entered the office, and who turned out to be the captain whose acquaintance he had made that morning. “Why don’t you put a stop to it?”

“Aw! They want some sport, don’t they?” was the answer. “Let them go ahead with it until they get tired, and then they will stop. Besides, you might as well get used to such talk one time as another, for you will hear plenty of it in the army.”

“But you mustn’t permit them to force me into the army,” whispered Tom to his father. “If you do, you will always be sorry for it, because you will never see me again.”

In a dazed sort of way Tom reported to the major, and then tried to hide himself in a corner of the office where he would be out of sight of his tormentors, but he was quickly routed from there by one of the major’s men, who told him to go outside where he would be under the eye of the guard. Of course his appearance was the signal for another outburst from the veterans, but he wisely tried to drown their gibes by entering into conversation with a conscript who looked as disconsolate and wretched as Tom himself felt. His father had given the bundle into his keeping, and taken his place outside the guards with the rest of the exempts, and Tom began to realize how it seemed to be alone in a crowd. Rodney and Ned did not come near him, and that made him angry and threaten vengeance. They might at least shake hands with him and assure him of their sympathy, Tom thought, but if they had been foolish enough to attempt it, it is more than probable that he would have turned his back upon them. More than that, Rodney Gray was not a hypocrite. Having had the most to do with the breaking up of Tom’s company of Home Guards, he would have uttered a deliberate untruth if he had said he was sorry to see him conscripted. He wasn’t; he would have been sorry to see him stay at home.

“And when he reaches the camp of instruction I hope some strict drill-sergeant will put him through an extra course of sprouts to pay him for the mean trick he tried to play on Dick Graham,” said Rodney to his friend Ned. “I could have told things that would have got all the Pinckney guards down on him if I had been so disposed, and now I am glad I didn’t do it. There he goes. Good-by, Tom Randolph.”

“Fall in!” shouted a stentorian voice. “Not off there, but here, with the right resting where I stand. Haven’t you Home Guards been drilled enough to learn how to fall in in two ranks? Face out that way toward the hitching-rack. Now listen to roll-call!”

In ten minutes more the conscripts had answered to their names and were headed toward Camp Pinckney, marching in a crooked straggling line with their bundles on their shoulders and armed guards on each side of them. There were forty-five in all, and two-thirds of them were Home Guards. There were many sober and tearful faces among the spectators when they moved away, and even the discharged veterans must have taken the matter seriously, for they did not utter one taunting word.

CHAPTER II.
LAMBERT’S SIGNAL-FIRE.

A few of Tom Randolph’s fellow-sufferers had repeatedly declared in his hearing that they never would be taken to Camp Pinckney alive; but when the roll was called inside the stockade at sunset the following day, their dreary, toilsome march having been completed by that time, every one of them answered to his name. Not one of their number had made his escape, and indeed it would have been foolhardy to attempt it, for the guards were alert and watchful, and it was whispered along the line that they had strict orders to shoot down the first man who tried to break away.

Not to dwell too long upon this part of our story, it will be enough to say that Tom Randolph remained in the camp of instruction for two solid months, during which time he suffered more than he thought it possible for mortal man to endure. He was given plenty to eat, such as it was, but scarcely a night passed that he was not aroused from a sound sleep to go on post or to repel an assault that was never made, and during the day-time he was drilled in the school of the soldier and company, and in the manual of arms, until all the muscles in him ached so that he could not lie still after he went to bed. Every hour in the day indignities were put upon him that caused his blood to boil, and he made matters worse by resenting them on the spot, the result being that he did more police duty than any other man in camp. Time and again he sought an interview with the commandant, intending to complain of his treatment and ask when he might look for his release, but he never saw the general except from a distance, and then was not permitted to approach him. All this while his father, who visited him at irregular intervals, bringing news from the outside world, was doing his best; but there were so many difficulties in his way, and so much red tape to be gone through, that he found himself balked at every point, and it is a wonder he was not tempted to give it up as a task beyond his powers.

“You see Roach’s books show that I claimed exemption for Larkin, and I’m afraid that’s against us,” he said to Tom one day, after talking the matter over with General Ruggles.

“But you have as much right to change your mind as other folks, I suppose,” replied Tom.

“Of course I have, but that isn’t the point. If Larkin were here to take your place in camp the work might be easier; but you see he isn’t. He has skipped.”

“Skipped where?”

“Out in the woods, to keep company with Lambert and Moseley, I suppose. And when he went he left word with some of the neighbors that if anything happened to my buildings during the next few weeks, I might thank him for it. He put out as soon as I told him that I couldn’t pay the beef and bacon the government demanded as the price of his exemption.”

“Did you tell Major Morgan that you wouldn’t pay it?”

“Certainly, and I told General Ruggles so; but that didn’t scare them at all. If they want beef and bacon they’ll just take it.”

“Well, now, if that isn’t a pretty way for a common overseer to treat a gentleman I wouldn’t say so,” declared Tom, who really thought that Larkin ought to have stayed at home and been conscripted in his place. “What difference does one man make in the size of an army, anyway? The general could let me go as well as not.”

“But he won’t, unless certain forms are complied with. Be as patient as you can, and remember that I shall leave no stone unturned.”

“Get an honorable discharge while you are about it, so that I shall not be called upon to go through with this performance a second time,” said Tom.

It is true that a single recruit made no great difference in the strength of an army, but for some reason that no one but General Ruggles could have explained it made all the difference in the world so far as Tom Randolph’s release from military duty was concerned. One day, about six weeks after the conversation above recorded, Mr. Randolph walked into camp and told Tom that he was a free man—or rather that he would be in a few hours, for Larkin had been captured by Major Morgan’s scouts, and was now on his way to camp to take Tom’s place.

“And am I to have an honorable discharge?” inquired Tom, who was so overjoyed that he could hardly speak.

“No; and I was foolish to ask for it,” said his father in disgust. “The general laughed in my face and said you hadn’t done anything worthy of it. Don’t say a word about it, but thank your lucky stars that you have escaped being ordered to the front.”

When the man Larkin and a few other conscripts were brought in under guard, Tom Randolph was standing as near the big gate as the camp regulations would allow him to get, waiting impatiently for somebody to come out of the commandant’s office and tell him he could go home. He was mean enough to try to attract Larkin’s attention when the latter tramped wearily into the stockade, but the man was so wrapped up in his troubles that he could hardly have recognized his best friend, if he had had one among the curious crowd that was gathered about the gate. Tom was a little disappointed, but quickly dismissed Larkin from his mind when he saw his father approaching with an expression on his face that was full of good news.

“Come right along,” said he. “It’s all settled now. There stands the officer who has orders to pass us out.”

“So the general has consented to do me justice at last, has he?” exclaimed Tom, who was not half as grateful as he ought to have been. “And he kept me here all these weary days and allowed me to be insulted and abused on account of that man Larkin, did he? Thank him for nothing. But I’ll fix some others who are as much to blame for my being here as General Ruggles is. I haven’t wasted all my time since I have been in jail, I tell you.”

“I brought a mule for you to ride,” continued his father. “But don’t you think we had better bunk with the guard to-night? It will be as dark as a pocket in an hour, and besides it is going to rain.”

“I don’t care if it rains pitchforks. I’ll face them rather than remain in this dreary hole a moment longer,” declared the liberated conscript. “And I am not going to the barracks after my clothes or blankets. I will them to the first man who can put his hands on them.”

Tom reached home in due time in spite of the rain and other discomforts that attended him on his journey, and it is scarcely necessary to say that his mother welcomed him as one risen from the dead. Her husband had told her doleful stories of Tom’s life in camp, and she was afraid that he would sink under his many hardships before his release could be effected. But Tom was not as badly off as he pretended to be. A few days’ rest made him as uneasy and full of meanness as he had ever been in his life; but it is fair to say that his uneasiness was due to an unaccountable delay in the carrying out of a certain little programme which he had arranged while living in the stockade. This was what he meant when he told his father that he had not wasted his time since he had been in jail.

During the month of September it became known to the guards and conscripts at Camp Pinckney that a meeting of cotton and tobacco planters had been held in Richmond “to consider the expediency of the purchase by the Confederacy, or of a voluntary destruction of the entire cotton and tobacco crop,” to keep it from falling into the hands of the Union forces. It is hard to tell why the news was so long in coming down to Louisiana, for the meeting, which was described as “one of the largest, wealthiest, and most intelligent that had ever assembled in the city,” was held as early as February. Among the other resolutions acted upon by this patriotic assemblage was one calling upon the Southern people to destroy all their property in advance of the invading armies, even to their homes, so that the conquest of the United States should be a barren one. Of course this resolution met the hearty approval of those of the Camp Pinckney guards and conscripts who had no property worth speaking of, and some of them declared that if General Ruggles would let them have their own way for twenty-four hours they would destroy thousands of bales of cotton which the owners would never burn themselves so long as they saw a prospect of selling them to the Yankees. This set Tom Randolph to thinking, and with the aid of some of the Pearl River Home Guards who were still on duty at the camp, he made up a nice little plan to revenge himself on several of the Mooreville people who had incurred his enmity. It might have been successful, too, if Tom had not allowed his unruly tongue to upset it. As soon as he reached home he began waiting and watching for some signs of activity on the part of the Pearl River vagabonds, but up to this time the clouds that hung over the swamp, and which he watched every night with anxious eyes, had not been lighted by any signal-fires.

The life that Tom Randolph now led was dreary and monotonous in the extreme; no healthy boy could have endured it for a week. Did he take Larkin’s place as overseer and do his work? Well, hardly; and he never had any intention of doing it. The field-hands did the work as well as the overseeing, and Tom spent his time in loafing or in riding about the country on a bare-back mule. It is true that Major Morgan’s “drag-net” had not cleared the neighborhood of everyone who was subject to military duty, for a few of the desperate ones, like Lambert and Moseley, had taken to the woods, and a few others had joined the Yankees in Baton Rouge, where they were safe from pursuit; but it had caught the most of the able-bodied men and boys of Tom’s acquaintance, and now he found himself almost alone. He saw Rodney and Ned now and then, but never spoke to them if he could help it, or visited them on their plantations; for since they, with Mrs. Griffin’s aid, kept him from being sent to a Northern prison, he disliked them more than he did before. He had never got over being surprised at Mr. Gray’s action in standing between Ned and the conscript officer, while he permitted the other telegraph operator, Drummond, to take his chances. Mr. Gray must be Union at heart or else he would not have done that; and if he was Union he ought to be driven out of the country. Tom found a world of consolation in the reflection that he would soon be even with him.

It was while the returned conscript was taking his usual morning ride on his mule, with a gunny-sack for a saddle, that he met his old first lieutenant, as described at the beginning of the last chapter. He knew that the man was living in the woods, otherwise he would have had him for company at Camp Pinckney, and he was surprised to find him riding along a public road in broad daylight. Lambert was also mounted on a mule, the property of his late employer, which he had appropriated to his own use without troubling himself to ask permission. He remembered that Tom had once drawn a sword upon him, and flattered himself that in Camp Pinckney his tyrannical captain was being well paid for that and other indignities he had put upon his Home Guards; consequently he was not a little astonished and vexed to find him breathing the air of freedom on this particular morning.

“How did you manage to get away from them fellers, anyhow?” inquired Lambert, nodding in the direction of the camp.

“I have influence with the governor,” replied Tom loftily. “I did not want to stay, and consequently I didn’t.”

“Afeared of the Yanks, was you!” continued Lambert with something like a sneer.

“No more afraid than yourself. You took to your heels and are in danger every moment of being caught and sent to camp, while I faced the music at once and will never have to do it again. I am discharged from military service for all time to come.”

“Well, by gum! I won’t do none,” said Lambert fiercely; and Tom noticed that every time he spoke he looked behind and on both sides as if he were in constant fear that Major Morgan’s men might steal a march upon him. “I say let them that brung the war on do the fightin’. I didn’t have no hand in it, an’ nuther am I goin’ to holp ’em out. Yes, I’m livin’ in the woods now, me an’—an’ some other fellers; but I have to come out once in a while to get grub an’ things, you know.”

“Then why don’t you come at night?” asked Tom.

“Kase it suits me better to come in the daytime. I aint a-skeared. There’s plenty kiver handy.”

“But if you dismount and take to your heels you’ll lose your mule.”

“Who keers? ’Tain’t my mu-el, an’ if they take him I can easy get another. What you drivin’ at now?”

“I am my father’s overseer.”

“Shucks! You couldn’t tell, to save your life if a corn row was laid off straight or not.”

“No matter for that,” said Tom sharply. “As long as I hold the position I can live at home and show myself openly; and that’s more than you can do. Have you seen that converted Confederate and his Yankee friend lately?”

“Who’s them?” inquired Lambert.

“Why, Ned Griffin and Rodney Gray.”

“Oh, yes; I see ’em every day ’most. They’re livin’ down there snug as you please, an’ as often as I——”

“Go on,” said Tom, when the man paused suddenly. “As often as you what?”

“As often as I want to see ’em I see ’em,” added Lambert.

“That isn’t what you were about to say at first,” replied Tom. “I hope you are not a friend of theirs?”

“Look a-here, cap’n, wasn’t I first leftenant of the Home Guards?”

“You were, and a very good officer you made, except when you took it upon yourself to act without waiting for orders from me; and then you always brought yourself into trouble. Can you be trusted?”

“If I can’t, what’s the reason I was ’lected to that office?” asked Lambert in reply. “What do you want of me?”

“The members of the Randolph family are not quite as poor as some people seem to think, I want you to understand,” said Tom in a mysterious whisper. “We have several little articles hidden away that our neighbors know nothing about, and next week we shall have some store tea and coffee and salt to hand around to those who need them. Your shoes are full of holes, too. You ought to have a new pair.”

If Lambert had given utterance to the thoughts that were in his mind, he would have said that his old commander would miss it if he hoped to bribe him in this way. There were few people in the settlement who did not stand in need of the articles Tom mentioned, but Lambert knew where he could get them for the asking. Still he wanted to know what Tom wished him to do, and said so.

“You fought the conscript officers offen me long’s as you could, an’ I aint likely to disremember it,” he replied.

“I kept you out of the army for more than a year, and now is the time for you to pay me for it,” replied Tom impressively. “Now listen while I tell you something. You know that our government has ordered every planter who owns cotton to burn it so that it will not fall into the hands of the Yankees, don’t you?”

“No!” answered Lambert. He was surprised, for this was news to him; but he saw what Tom was trying to get at.

“Well, it is the truth, and those who do not comply with the order will be punished in some way, and their property destroyed by our own soldiers. Now there’s old man Gray; he has cotton.”

“And he won’t never burn it,” exclaimed Lambert.

“That’s the idea exactly. He’d rather sell it to the Yankees for sixty cents a pound; and so far as I can see there is nothing to hinder him from doing it.”

“Less’n some of our fellers slip up an’ burn it for him,” put in Lambert.

“You’ve hit it again,” exclaimed Tom, who told himself that he wasn’t going to have any trouble at all in bringing the man to do the work he had suddenly laid out for him. “He can sell his cotton if nobody stops him, but my father can’t sell his because he is known to be a loyal Confederate. Do you think that’s fair or right?”

“I know it aint,” answered Lambert. “Gray is Union, and oughter be sent amongst the Yanks where he b’longs; but your paw is Confedrit and so am I. Do you want me to tech off that cotton?”

“Well, no; not exactly that. You know where it is, I suppose?”

“There aint much of anything in the woods in this country that I don’t know something about,” said Lambert with a grin. “I reckon I might find it if I took a notion.”

“That is what I thought, and now I come to the point. While I was in camp I learned that a squad of our soldiers is coming here some day to look after the very cotton we are talking about,” said Tom, who did not think it would be just the thing to say that he had proposed the expedition himself, and accurately described the bayou in which Mr. Gray’s four hundred bales could be found. “Now if you happen to see that squad while you are riding about the country——”

“I’ll take leg-bail mighty sudden, I bet you,” interrupted Lambert.

“Without offering to show them where the cotton is hidden?” cried Tom.

“You bet! I aint got no call to go philanderin’ about the woods with a passel of soldiers, an’ if you was the friend you pertend to be you wouldn’t ask sich a thing of me.”

“Why, man alive, they are Home Guards,” began Tom.

“Then I wouldn’t trust none of ’em as fur as I could sling a church house,” replied Lambert.

“And besides, they don’t know that you have been conscripted, for they belong to the Pearl River bottoms, miles away from here.”

“No odds; Major Morgan’s men can give me all the dodgin’ I want to do, an’ if them Pearl River fellers don’t find that cotton till I show it to ’em they’ll never find it. I jest aint goin’ to run no fule chances on bein’ tooken to that camp.”

Tom Randolph wished now that he hadn’t broached the subject to Lambert at all, for what assurance had he that the man, whom he knew to be vindictive and untrustworthy, would not go straight to Mr. Gray and tell him all about it?

“I thought you were a friend of mine, but since you are not it’s all right,” said Tom, intimating by a wave of his hand that Lambert’s refusal was a matter of no moment whatever. “But come with me to the house, and let me see if I can’t find something for you.” And as he spoke he looked down at the man’s broken shoes and bare, sunbrowned ankles.

“Shucks!” exclaimed Lambert. “I don’t need to go beggin’ shoes an’ stockin’s of nobody; an’ as for the salt an’ store tea that you’ve been talkin’ about, I have them in the woods every day.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Tom bluntly.

“It don’t make no odds to me whether you do or not, but it’s a fact.”

“Where do you get them? You haven’t the cheek to go to Baton Rouge, after the part you played in having the place bombarded by the Union fleet. You wouldn’t dare show your face there, and I don’t believe you have any friends to bring goods through the lines for you. I haven’t forgotten that old man Gray wanted that mob to thrash me as if I were a nigger, and I hope you remember that he was strongly in favor of hanging you. Ned Griffin warned you, and you jumped out of bed and ran for your life.”

“Do you reckon I’ve disremembered all the things that happened that night?” said Lambert with a scowl. “I aint, I bet you, an’ mebbe you’ll find it out some of those days. I aint nobody’s coward, an’ I dast do a good many things when I make up my mind to it. You jest watch, an’ you’ll see fire some of those nights. But when you see it you may know that no Pearl River Home Guards didn’t have a hand in it.”

“Will you do it yourself?” said Tom gleefully.

“I aint a-sayin’ who’ll do it, but it’ll be done. I’ve been mistreated an’ used like a dog all along of this war, an’ I’m a-goin’ to even up with somebody to pay for it.”

“And when the work is done come to my house; ask for anything I’ve got and I will give it to you. Where are you going now?” asked Tom, as the man began digging his heels into his mule’s sides and tugging at one of the reins in the effort to turn the beast around.

“I reckon I’d best be joggin’ along back. I’ve been out from under kiver ’most long enough. You watch out an’ you’ll see that fire; that’s every word I’ve got to say about it.”

The two separated and rode off in different directions—the one in a brown study, and the other shaking his head and muttering angry words to himself. Lambert was very well satisfied with the result of the interview, for it had suggested something to him that he never would have thought of himself, but Tom could not drive away the thought that perhaps it would have been better for him if he had turned his mule’s head down the road instead of up when he left his father’s gate that morning.

“I know that Lambert was awfully angry at me because I shook my sword in his face, but what else could I do when he acted as if he were about to rush up the steps and lay violent hands upon me in mother’s presence?” soliloquized Tom. “Perhaps I talked too much and at the wrong time; but if Lambert plays me false, I’ll put every Yankee scouting party that comes along on his trail. I’ll keep a bright lookout for that fire, as he told me, but I shall not draw an easy breath until I see it. Then I shall feel safe, for of course if he fires that cotton he will not tell on himself.”

Tom went up to his room at his usual hour for retiring, but instead of going to bed he drew a big rocking-chair in front of a window that looked out toward Rodney Gray’s plantation, and seated himself in it to watch for Lambert’s signal fire—the light on the clouds which would tell him that one of Mooreville’s most respected citizens was being punished because he, Tom Randolph, didn’t like him. He had no assurance from Lambert that he would see the blaze that night, but he hoped he would, and he resolved that he would sit at that window for six months, if necessary, rather than miss the sight and the gratification it would afford him.

“Lambert’s face grew as black as a thunder-cloud when I reminded him that Mr. Gray was one of the mob who wanted to hang him for bringing about the bombardment of Baton Rouge,” thought Tom, “and I know he will have revenge for that if he gets half a chance.”

Tom had not yet made up for the sleep he lost at Camp Pinckney, and in less than half an hour he was slumbering heavily. It was long after midnight when he awoke with a start and a feeling that there was something unusual going on. His eyes rested on the window when they were opened, and the sight he saw through the panes sent a thrill all through him and brought him to his feet in an instant. The glare on the sky told him there was a fire raging somewhere in the depths of the forest, and that it must be a big one, for the whole heavens in that direction were illuminated by it.

“He’s done it; as sure as the world he’s done it,” said Tom, who was highly excited. “It’s all the proof I want that I am not so much of a nobody as some people make me out to be. But I had no idea that baled cotton would give out such a blaze as that. However, four hundred bales, if they were all in one place, would make a pretty good-sized pile.”

Tom’s first impulse was to rush downstairs and tell his mother the good news, but he was afraid she might not keep it to herself. She would be likely to call his father’s attention to the light in the sky, and that was a thing Tom did not care to have her do. Mr. Randolph had changed wonderfully of late—ever since he missed salt from his table and learned that cotton was worth sixty cents a pound in Northern markets—and Tom had not failed to notice it. He wasn’t half as good a Confederate as he used to be, and even showed a desire to be friendly with Mr. Gray and Rodney, who belonged to that unpatriotic class of planters spoken of by the Southern historian who “were known to buy every article of their consumption in Yankee markets,” that is to say, in Baton Rouge. This being the case Tom did not go downstairs and tell what was going on in the swamp for fear his father might have something sharp and unpleasant to say about it. He sat in his chair and watched the light until it began to fade away before the stronger light of the rising sun, and then went to bed, happy in the reflection that there was one traitor in the neighborhood who would not make a fortune out of the unholy war that had been forced upon the South by Lincoln’s hirelings.

It was almost noon when he opened his eyes again, and the first move he made was for the window that looked toward the swamp that inclosed Rodney Gray’s plantation on three sides. Of course all signs of the conflagration had long since disappeared, but it had left gloom and anxiety in the house below, as Tom found when he went down to eat the late breakfast that had been kept warm for him. His mother seemed to have grown a dozen years older since he last saw her.

“What is the matter?” he demanded. “Your face is as long as my arm.”

“O Tommy, did you see it last night?” she asked in reply.

“See what last night?” faltered Tom, who began to have a faint suspicion that it would be a wise thing for him to make his mother believe, if he could, that he had slept soundly through it all.

“Why, the fire. Someone’s cotton has been destroyed. Mr. Walker, who lives on the plantation below, saw the light and came up this morning and told your father about it, and together they have gone to the swamp to look into the matter.”

“Oh! the swamp,” repeated Tom with a chuckle. “That’s all right, and father need not have troubled himself to ride so far without his breakfast. Please tell the girl to give me a bite of something. Old man Gray has some cotton in there, I believe.”

“But, my dear, we have two hundred bales in there, too.”

The tone in which the words were uttered struck Tom dumb and motionless for a moment. Then he groped blindly for the nearest chair and dropped into it. It was true that his father had a fortune hidden not more than half a mile from the bayou in which Mr. Gray’s four hundred bales were concealed, and up to that moment he had forgotten all about it. It was also true that all the cotton that had been run into the swamp was plainly marked with the initials of the owners’ names, but Tom didn’t know whether Lambert could read or not. He had never thought to ask him, and now he blamed himself for his stupidity. If it was the Pearl River vagabonds, and not Lambert, who applied the torch, there was the same trouble to be feared. Tom took particular pains to tell the men with whom he conspired to destroy Mr. Gray’s property that every bale of it was marked R. W. G., but he now remembered, with a sinking at his heart that almost drove him crazy, that these Home Guards were as ignorant as the mules and horses they rode on their plundering expeditions, and perhaps there was not one among them who knew one letter from another. The fear that the wrong pile might have been committed to the flames threw him into a terrible state of mind.

“I don’t wonder that you are sadly troubled,” said his mother, in a sympathizing tone. “But I suppose it is about what we can look for in times like these. I never did expect to save that cotton. I was sure that if the Yankees did not steal it the rebels would destroy it.”

(Mrs. Randolph called them “rebels” now. A few months before she would have spoken of them as “Confederates” or “our own brave soldiers.”)

“Take it away,” yelled Tom, addressing the girl, who just then brought his breakfast in from the kitchen. “I don’t want anything to eat. I never want anything more as long as I live. How many thousand dollars was that cotton worth?”

“You’ll fret yourself sick if you give way to your feelings like this,” protested his mother. “We are not sure that anyone has troubled our cotton; we only fear it.”

“It would be on a par with the luck that has attended me all through this miserable war if every pound of it was gone up in smoke,” said Tom in a discouraged voice. “It’s some consolation to know that we are all poor together, for of course the men who knew where to find our cotton knew where to find Gray’s and Walker’s also.”

With these words Tom snatched his hat from the rack in the hall, and went down the steps and out to the gate to watch for his father’s return. The latter was a long time coming, and his face wore so dejected a look when he rode up and passed into the yard, that Tom could not find it in his heart to speak to him. He simply turned about and went into the house to wait, with as much fortitude as he could command, for his father to come in and tell the terrible news that was so plainly written on his face. His wife, who met him at the door, did not say a word until he had seated himself in the chair he usually occupied by the front window, and then she whispered the question:

“Is it all gone, George?”

“Every bale,” replied Mr. Randolph with a groan. “In the first place, nearly three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of niggers ran away and left us with barely a handful to do our work for us, and now the cotton I was depending on to start me afresh when the war ended has run away too; or gone up in the elements, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Of course Mr. Gray’s cotton——” stammered Tom.

“Wasn’t touched,” said Mr. Randolph, finishing the sentence for him. “You may believe it or not, but it is a fact that our cotton alone was destroyed. Walker and I found Mr. Gray and Rodney and Griffin and a dozen or so others in the swamp when we got there, and they had been trying to drag some of my bales out of reach of the flames; but they didn’t go there until morning, and of course were too late to be of any use.”

“The cowards!” exclaimed Tom bitterly. “If they saw the fire when it was burning, why didn’t they go at once?”

“Would you have done it?” replied his father. “They thought the fire had been set by soldiers and were afraid to go out in the dark; but if the soldiers had had a hand in it they would have burned other cotton. It was the work of someone who has a spite against us, and he has made beggars of us. I haven’t a dollar of good money, or a thing that can be turned into money; and even if I had, you and your Home Guards have made yourselves so obnoxious to the Baton Rouge people that I wouldn’t dare go there to trade. Oh, yes; we’re fit candidates for the poorhouse if there was one in the county.”

Tom Randolph covered his face with his hands and trembled violently. He could not speak, but told himself that the world would not have held half so much trouble for him if that man Lambert had never been born into it.

CHAPTER III.
MR. RANDOLPH CARRIES TALES.

When Tom Randolph and the man Lambert brought their interview to a close and rode away in different directions, as we have recorded, the latter turned into the first lane he came to, and finally disappeared in the woods. For three or four miles or more he rode along the fence that separated a wide corn-field from the timber, passed in the rear of Mr. Gray’s extensive home plantation, and at last came out into the road again opposite the house in which Ned Griffin and his mother now lived. Having made sure that there were none of Major Morgan’s men in sight (he feared them and the Baton Rouge people more than he did the boys in blue) Lambert crossed the road and threw down the bars that gave entrance into the door-yard. The noise aroused Ned’s hounds, whose sonorous yelping quickly brought their master to the porch.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Ned, when he saw who his visitor was. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I have been looking for you all day. Have you done anything for your country since I seen you last?”

Ned’s manner would have made Tom Randolph open his eyes, and might, perhaps, have aroused his suspicions, there was so much unbecoming familiarity in it. More than that, his words seemed to imply that there was some sort of an understanding between him and the ex-Home Guard. The latter seated himself on the end of the porch, pulled his cob pipe from his pocket and tapped his thumb-nail with the inverted bowl to show that it was empty, whereupon Ned went into the house and presently came out again with a plug of navy tobacco in his hand. The sight of it made Lambert’s eyes glisten.

“I aint seen the like very often since the war come onto us,” said he, as he proceeded to cut off enough of the weed to fill his pipe; “an’ this here nigger-heel that we uns have to put up with nowadays aint fitten for a white man to use. Do you know, I think Rodney Gray is jest one of the smartest fellers there is a-goin’?”

“I’ve always thought and said so,” replied Ned. “But what has he done lately that is so very bright?”

“Hirin’ me to watch that cotton of his’n so that I could tell him if I see anybody castin’ ugly eyes at it,” said Lambert, settling back at his ease on the gallery so that he could enjoy his smoke to the best advantage. “When you told me that Rodney would take it as a friendly act on my part if I would do that much for him, I didn’t think there was the least bit of use in it, but now I know there is. I run up agin somebody a while ago, an’ who do you think it was?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, but I hope it wasn’t anyone who had designs on that cotton.”

“It was that Tom Randolph,” answered Lambert.

“You must be dreaming!” exclaimed Ned.

“Them’s the very same words I axed myself when I first see Tom comin’ t’wards me on his mu-el, kase I couldn’t b’lieve it was him till I listened to him talk; then I knowed it was Tom, for almost the first thing he said was meanness. He’s made it up with some of the Home Guards at Camp Pinckney.”

“Gracious!” cried Ned, becoming frightened. “They’re the worst lot of ruffians in the world. They shoot their prisoners.”

“So I’ve heerd tell,” said Lambert indifferently. “Well, them’s the fine chaps that Tom has made it up with to burn old man Gray’s cotton, an’ he wanted to know if I would sorter guide them to the place where it was, an’ I told him I wouldn’t, kase I aint going to take no chances on bein’ tooken to that camp. I’m scared of them Pearl River chaps.”

“You’d better be, for they would just as soon shoot you as anybody else, simply to keep their hands in. Now, how are we going to keep them from finding that cotton?”

“That’s the very thing that’s been a-pesterin’ of me ever since Tom spoke to me about it,” answered Lambert.

“If you don’t act as their guide they can easily find somebody else who will do it rather than be shot,” said Ned in an anxious tone. “I don’t believe Rodney has enjoyed a night’s sound sleep since he had his first talk with the Federal provost marshal at Baton Rouge. But he is bound to save his father’s property if he can, and you must do all in your power to help him.”

“Do you remember what you said on the night you rid up to my door an’ warned me that the citizens allowed to hang me for what I done down the river?” replied Lambert. “You said that old man Gray was tryin’ to talk ’em out of it by tellin’ ’em that if they done it they would be sorry in the mornin’, didn’t you? Well, I don’t forget a man who does me a good turn any more’n I forget one who does me a mean one.” And when he said this he scowled fiercely, for he was thinking of Tom Randolph.

“Well, have you any plan in your head?” continued Ned.

“Nary plan. I jest rid down to get some good tobacker an’ to tell you to warn Rodney to look out for breakers. What’s the reason you don’t want me to go nigh his house for a few days?”

“That’s my business—and Rodney’s,” said Ned shortly.

“’Taint mine,” laughed Lambert, “but if you asked me to make a rough guess——”

“But I don’t ask you to make a rough guess,” interrupted Ned. “Or a smooth one either. Did Tom Randolph tell you how he got out of Camp Pinckney?”

“——a rough guess, I should say that Rodney’s got one of two things in hidin’ down there; either a deserter from our side, or a Yankee pris’ner that he is waitin’ for a chance to send to Baton Rouge. But ’taint none of my business, an’ I won’t tell,” said Lambert with good-natured persistence. And then he stopped, for when he looked up into Ned’s face he saw that it had suddenly grown very pale. “I aint said a word about it to nobody, an’ aint goin’ to; but you tell Rodney that when he wants friends, as most likely he will, they’ll be around. Me an’ Moseley an’ the rest didn’t want to go into the army, an’ we’re bound we won’t; but for all that we’re not the cowards that some folks take us to be.”

“You have something on your mind, and I am sure of it,” said Ned, as the man touched a match to his pipe and arose from his seat on the porch. “If you will tell me what it is, so that I can carry it to Rodney, I’ll give you a pair of shoes for yourself and Moseley.”

“Them’s jest the things that Tom Randolph offered to give me if I would guide them Home Guards to Mr. Gray’s cotton,” said Lambert with a grin ,“an’ now I’m goin’ to get’em without goin’ to all that trouble an’ risk. Beats me how Rodney can fight the Yanks the best he knows how for fifteen months, an’ then turn square around an’ buy shoes an’ salt an’ things of ’em. Looks to me as though the Yanks would ’a’ shot him the first thing they done.”

“They are not savages, to shoot a man after he quits fighting,” said Ned impatiently. “It takes Confederate Home Guards to do that. What do you say? Do you want the shoes or not?”

“Bring ’em out, an’ I will tell you all I had in my head when I rid into this yard,” was the answer, and Ned turned about and went into the house. When he returned he brought the shoes, which Lambert received with the remark that he knew some planters in the neighborhood who had willingly paid fifty dollars for footwear that wasn’t half as good.

“But if they had had greenbacks instead of rebel scrip they could have got their shoes for a good deal less,” replied Ned. “There isn’t a Confederate in the country loyal enough to refuse Yankee money when it is offered to him. Major Morgan wouldn’t do it. Now, what are your plans?”

“The only thoughts I had in my head when I rid into the yard, was that I would come here an’ get a bit of good tobacker, an’ tell you an’ Rodney that Tom Randolph was tryin’ to have your cotton burned,” replied Lambert, placing the shoes under his arm, and backing away as if he feared Ned might try to snatch them. “That’s all, honest Injun.”

“And haven’t you hit upon any plan to head those Home Guards off?”

“Nary plan, kase they aint found the cotton yet. When they do, like as not I’ll think up somethin’.”

“Then it will be too late to save the cotton,” said Ned in disgust. “If you are going to do anything, you want to move before they get into the swamp.”

“They’ll be some cotton burned, most likely; I aint sayin’ there won’t,” observed Lambert, placing one hand on his mule’s neck and vaulting lightly upon his back. “But you can tell Rodney that his paw’s will stay on the ground as long as anybody’s. That’s the onliest plan I’ve got in my head. When I get time to think up somethin’ else I’ll let you know.”

Lambert rode out of the yard, stopping on the way to put up the bars behind him, and Ned Griffin went in to his unfinished supper. His mother, who had overheard every word that passed between him and his visitor, looked frightened.

“I can’t imagine how the thing got wind,” said Ned in reply to her inquiring glances, “but Lambert seems to know all about it. I am not afraid that he will lisp it, but I am afraid it will get to the knowledge of some enemy who will set Morgan after us.”

“O Ned, that would be dreadful,” said Mrs. Griffin with a perceptible shudder.

“I believe you. I don’t know what the penalty is for helping a deserter, but I believe the major would send us to the front to pay us for it.”

“I think you ought to tell Rodney,” said Mrs. Griffin.

“He knows it as well as I do and is quite as anxious; but the man can’t walk or ride, and how are we going to get him inside the Yankee lines? We can’t take him there in a carriage, for the roads are too closely watched. Of course I shall stand Rodney’s friend, but my ‘rough guess’ is that we’ll wish that friend of ours had gone somewhere else for the help he needed.”

That night Ned Griffin was aroused from a sound sleep by his mother, who rapped upon the door of his room, and told him in a trembling, excited voice that either Lambert had proved himself a traitor, or else the Pearl River ruffians had stumbled upon some enemy of Mr. Gray who was willing to act as guide, for they had certainly found the cotton and fired it. Ned was thunderstruck. He hurried on the few clothes he could find in the dark conveniently, and ran out to the porch; but when he had taken one look at the bright spot on the sky, which seemed to be growing brighter and larger every moment, and compared its bearings with those of well-known landmarks in the range of his vision, he drew a long breath of relief.

“I almost knew that Lambert did not tell the truth when he assured me he had nothing on his mind,” said Ned to his frightened mother, who had followed him to the porch. “Go back and sleep easy. That isn’t Mr. Gray’s cotton.”

“Are you quite sure of it? How do you know?” inquired Mrs. Griffin. “It must be cotton, for there is no house in that direction.”

“Stand here in front of me and I will show you why I know it is not Mr. Gray’s,” answered Ned. “Now, squint along the side of that post that stands on the edge of the gallery, and bring your eye to bear on that low place in the timber-line. Do you see it? Well, there’s where Mr. Gray’s cotton is. The pile that’s burning is half a mile farther off and a mile farther to the right.”

“Do you know who owns it?”

“It belongs to Mr. Randolph, who has nobody to thank for it but his dutiful son Tom.”

“Ned, do you know what you are saying?” said his mother somewhat sharply.

“I am quite sure on that point. Tom was too handy with his sword in the first place, and with his tongue in the second. He ought to have had better sense than to put such an idea into Lambert’s head. That man can do as much damage of this sort as he likes, and those who don’t know any better will blame the rebel guerillas or the Yankee cavalry for it.”

“Do you think Lambert started that fire?”

“I am as well satisfied of it as though I had stood by and seen him strike the match that set it going. Half an hour more will tell the story at any rate. Now you run back to bed, and I will stay here and watch that low place in the trees I showed you a moment ago. If no blaze appears in that direction I shall know that this is Lambert’s work.”

Mrs. Griffin retired, and Ned sat there on the porch with the hounds for company, and looked first at the bright glow on the sky and then at the low place in the timber, until day dawned and Mr. Gray and two or three of his neighbors rode up to the bars and accosted him.

“Have you been in there?” asked his employer anxiously.

“No, sir,” replied Ned emphatically. “I saw the fire, but not knowing what sort of men I might find around it I thought it best to keep away from it. But I don’t think it was your cotton.”

He did not say that he was as certain as he wanted to be that the loss was Mr. Randolph’s, and that it had been brought upon him by Tom’s insane desire to be revenged upon some members of the Gray family, for he knew there were one or two men in the party who would not rest easy until they had seen Tom severely punished. So he awaited an opportunity to say a word to Mr. Gray in private.

“I am sorry it was anybody’s cotton, but of course I should be glad to know it was not mine,” said Ned’s employer, with an effort to smile and look as cheerful as usual. “But if mine didn’t go last night it may go next week, so I don’t know that it makes much difference. Between Yankees and Confederates we planters stand a poor show of selling a pound of this almost priceless commodity.”

“Sixty cents a pound!” groaned one of Mr. Gray’s companions. “Good money, too, worth a hundred cents on a dollar, and now it has vanished in flames and smoke.”

“It wasn’t your cotton either, Mr. Randall,” Ned hastened to assure him. “Rodney and I have spent two weeks locating the cotton hidden in our swamp, and we can tell within two points of the compass the direction in which every planter’s property lies from his gallery and mine. The pile that was burned last night was half-way between yours and Mr. Gray’s.”

“Whose was it, then?”

“Mr. Randolph’s.”

“I am very sorry to hear it,” said Mr. Gray earnestly. “If it is the truth, Mr. Randolph will be left in very bad shape.”

“Not worse than the rest of us, I reckon,” said Randall impatiently. “He did all he could to help on the war, and now he’s afraid to go to the front and help fight it out. It serves him right.”

Mr. Gray might have retorted that there were others in the same boat—that Mr. Randall himself had been a fierce secessionist when the war first broke out and the Union armies and gunboats were far away, but now professed to be a strong Union man because he was anxious to save his cotton from being confiscated; but he said not a word in reply. He turned away from the bars, and Ned Griffin hastened to the stable-yard to put the saddle on his horse. His riding nag and Rodney’s were among the few that had been left to their owners when Breckenridge’s army retreated after the battle of Baton Rouge, and the reason they were left was because the boys had done so much hospital duty both before and after the fight. The rebel soldiers repaid their kindness by doing as little stealing as possible under the circumstances; but when the rear-guard disappeared from view the two friends could not find any bacon and meal for breakfast. But their flocks of chickens and the few scrub cows that were relied on to supply the plantations with milk and butter were not molested, and Ned and Rodney were thankful for that. The former came up with Mr. Gray and his party before they had gone very far, and when they reached Rodney’s place they were joined by Rodney himself, who seemed to be on the watch for them. He waved his hat in the air when he saw his father and Ned approaching, but put it on his head quickly when he discovered that they were not alone. In a moment more he would have said something to be sorry for, because he knew whose cotton had been burned and who was responsible for it. After greeting his father and exchanging opinions with him and his friends, he fell back to the rear and rode by Ned’s side, but could find no opportunity to compare notes with him. However, each understood what the other would have said if he could.

Half an hour’s riding brought them to the pile of smoking cinders and ashes that covered the spot where Mr. Randolph’s cotton had been concealed inside a dense thicket of trees and bushes whose interior had been cleared away to receive it. The road made by the heavy four-mule wagons in passing in and out of the woods had been so carefully filled with logs and tree-tops that scarcely a trace of it could be seen now, and its owner had indulged in the hope that, with the exception of a few neighbors and faithful servants, no one knew the hiding-place of all that was left of his once abundant wealth; but some enemy had found it out, and he was a ruined man. This was the opinion expressed by every one of Mr. Gray’s party, for when they came to examine the ground, which they did immediately upon their arrival, they did not find a single hoof-print save those that had been made by their own riding horses.

“There’s no cavalry been in here,” said Mr. Randall, who was the first to give utterance to the thoughts that were in the minds of all, “and, according to my way of thinking, that proves something.”

There were a few half-consumed bales on the outside of the smoking pile, and it was while the party was engaged in pulling these farther out of reach of the fire that Mr. Randolph and his neighbor appeared on the scene. Mr. Walker looked somewhat relieved, but remarked in an undertone that there might have been more than one fire even if he didn’t see it, and rode away at a rapid pace to assure himself of the safety of his own cotton, while Mr. Randolph sat on his mule and gazed mournfully at the blackened pile before him. There was no one who could say a word to comfort him, for by this time the planters were all satisfied in their own minds that someone with whom they were well acquainted had done the work; and if that was the case, it might not be a great while before their own cotton would disappear in the same way. They gradually drew away and left him to his gloomy reflections, and then it was that Rodney and Ned had a chance to compare notes and say a word to Mr. Gray in private. When the latter had listened to Ned’s story, all he had to say was that it would have been better for the community if Mr. Randolph had not been so persistent in his efforts to have Tom released from military duty. Of course he and the boys did not fail to satisfy themselves that the cotton in which they were most interested was still safe in its place of concealment, and Mr. Randolph did the same; that is, he spent all the forenoon in visiting the different localities in which his neighbors’ cotton had been hidden, and when he found, as he had suspected from the first, that he was the only sufferer, his thoughts were bitter and revengeful indeed. To make matters worse Mr. Walker said to him while they were on their way home:

“If you were the only Confederate in the settlement I could easily explain this business; but why you should be singled out among so many is something I can’t understand, unless it is because your son Tom has served the cause with too much zeal.”

“Tom hasn’t done any more than others, nor as much,” replied Mr. Randolph. “Rodney Gray served fifteen months in the army, and here he is living in perfect security and entirely unmolested by our conscript officers, although he is known to be hand-and-glove with the enemies of his country. I believe he has assisted escaped Yankee prisoners, even if others do not.”

“Perhaps he has,” said Mr. Walker, who was one of those disbelieving ones who laughed the loudest when Tom told of his desperate fight with “Uncle Sam’s Lost Boys,” who had been chased by bloodhounds while they were terrorizing the country between Camp Pinckney and Mooreville. Mr. Walker knew, of course, that there were four escaped prisoners somewhere in the woods, who ran when they could, and killed their pursuers as often as a fight was forced upon them, but he did not believe that Tom Randolph had been a captive in their hands as he pretended, or that he had escaped by knocking his guard on the head with the butt of a musket. He knew Tom too well to put faith in any such story. He did not believe, either, that Rodney Gray would go back on his record as a loyal Confederate by helping runaway Yankees inside the lines at Baton Rouge.

“Perhaps he has, though it is a hard tale for me to swallow,” continued Mr. Walker. “But if you’d said that Rodney was given to helping deserters I’d believe you. He’s got one in hiding this very minute.”

“How do you know that?” demanded Mr. Randolph, now beginning to show some interest in what his companion was saying.

“You can’t keep anything from the niggers these times, and yesterday I overheard two of my house servants talking about it when they thought they were alone,” answered Mr. Walker. “It seems that Rodney and young Griffin found the man in the woods half dead from wounds and hunger and exhaustion, and took him home to nurse him back to health. There wouldn’t be anything so very bad about that, and I don’t suppose Major Morgan would object to it if he knew it; but the man doesn’t want to go back to camp, and as soon as he is able to travel Rodney allows to take him to the river. There’s something wrong in that, I reckon.”

“I should say there was,” exclaimed Mr. Randolph, who told himself that now was the time to make his more fortunate neighbor suffer as keenly as he was suffering himself in losing his valuable store of cotton. “Such work as that must be against the law, and the conscript officer ought to do something about it.”

“That’s what I think,” said Mr. Walker; and then the two relapsed into silence, for neither was willing to speak the thoughts that were passing through his mind.

When they reached the cross-roads they separated, Mr. Walker keeping on toward home, while Tom’s father, believing it to be a good plan to strike while the iron was hot, turned his mule in the direction of Kimberley’s store. He found Major Morgan there; in fact he was always there, for it was his place of business, and wasted not a moment in conveying to him the startling information he had received from his friend Walker: but to his unbounded surprise the major took it very coolly. He listened until Mr. Randolph had told his story and then broke out almost fiercely:

“Do you for a moment imagine that I would have been ordered here if I had not been thought capable of attending to affairs in my district? That news is old. I knew all about it a week ago.”

“Then why didn’t you arrest Rodney Gray a week ago?” said Mr. Randolph hotly.

“Because I am tired of working on evidence that is furnished me by tale-bearers. You’ve got something against that young Gray or you would not tell me this. I am satisfied to let that deserter stay where he is for the present. He’s getting well there; he would die at Camp Pinckney.”

“You ought to be inside the Yankee lines,” declared Mr. Randolph, his rage getting the better of his prudence. “There’s where you belong.”

“And there’s where you will start for if you don’t leave my office this instant,” roared the major, rising to his feet and upsetting his chair in the act. “Captain!”

But Mr. Randolph did not linger for the captain to present himself. He hastened through the door, glancing nervously at the soldiers he passed on the way for fear they might stop him, swung himself upon his mule, and started for home, lost in wonder. It seemed that in some very mysterious manner Rodney had gained an influence with the crusty conscript officer equal to that which he exercised with the Federals in Baton Rouge. Well, he had; but there was no mystery about it, only a little strategy. Rodney had been intrusted by the major with a few gold pieces which he had exchanged in Baton Rouge for greenbacks, and it wasn’t likely that the officer was going to be hard on the boy who kept his pocket filled with good money. Even inside the Confederate lines greenbacks passed at par, and would buy more than rebel scrip, on which there was a heavy discount. But Rodney did not carry news; that is to say, neither side could wring from him a word of information concerning the doings of the other side. The Federal provost marshal knew this and so did Major Morgan, and the consequence was they were both willing to trust him. To quote Rodney’s own language, he had fought for fame and didn’t get it, and now he was working for money. All he had in prospect was wrapped up in his father’s cotton, which was the source of no little anxiety and trouble to him.

Rodney was not aware that the major knew he was harboring a rebel deserter, who had been badly wounded while escaping from the stockade at Camp Pinckney, and was careful to keep the fact from the knowledge of all except those who could be trusted. He did not care to receive callers, for fear there might be a spy or mischief-maker among them, and relied upon his hounds to give him warning when anyone rode up to the front bars. They acted so savagely when they rushed in a body down the walk to meet a stranger, that the latter, whoever he might be, usually thought it prudent to hail the house before venturing to dismount, thus giving Rodney time to get the deserter into some inner room where he would be out of sight. But one morning, about two weeks after the occurrence of the events we have just recorded, he had visitors so many in number that they stood in no fear of the hounds, nor did they hail the house. They simply threw down one or two of the top bars, jumped their horses over the rest, and came up on a gallop, their leader drawing rein in front of the open door, just in time to catch a momentary glimpse of the deserter as he vanished into a back room. Rodney’s heart sank. He had had all his work and worry for nothing. Of course his unwelcome visitors, who were Federal cavalrymen, would take the deserter to Baton Rouge when they went and ship him off to a Northern prison. The officer in command of the squad, which was a much larger one than Rodney had ever seen scouting through the country before, proved to be a captain whose acquaintance he had formed during one of his visits to the provost marshal’s office, and he walked out on the porch and faced him as if he had nothing to conceal.

“Good-morning,” said he, with a military salute. “What brought you out here in such a hurry and so far from your base?”

The captain waved his hand toward the back-yard as if to say to his men that they were at liberty to break ranks and quench their thirst at the well, and then he answered Rodney’s question.

“We came out to pay our respects to the conscript officer in Mooreville, but he was uncivil enough to light out before we could exchange a word with him,” said the captain. “We didn’t want to ride all the way out here for nothing, and so we changed our scouting party into a cotton-burning expedition. I don’t suppose you would know a bale of cotton if you ran against it, would you?”

The words were spoken in jest, but Rodney knew there was a good deal of truth in them, for he looked over the captain’s shoulder and saw a negro standing at the bars under guard. He was one of Mr. Randall’s field-hands, who had assisted in hauling his master’s cotton into the swamp.

CHAPTER IV.
THE PHANTOM BUSHWHACKERS.

“I am not exactly on a cotton-burning expedition either,” continued the captain, after he had drained the gourd which one of his men brought him, filled with water fresh from the well, “but I am ordered to look around and find it, so that I can tell whether or not it will pay the government to send out wagons to haul it in. But if it is in such a bad place that we can’t get it out, of course we shall have to burn it to keep the enemy from profiting by it. I understand that there is a good deal of cotton hidden about here somewhere, but I hope yours is where nobody will find it.”

“I haven’t a bale to bless myself with,” replied Rodney.

“Perhaps not, but your father has; several of them,” said the officer with a smile. “But I tell you it will go against the grain for us to touch anything that belongs to you, after what you did for some of our escaped prisoners.”

“Then why can’t you give us a chance to take it inside your lines and sell it?” inquired Rodney. “If it is the policy of the Federal government to drain the South of cotton, don’t you see that every bale we put into your hands will be one bale less for the Confederates?”

“I understand that very well, but you see your rebel record is dead against you. You fought us like fury for more than a year, and now, when you find that you are in a fair way to get soundly whipped, you want to turn around and make money out of us. That plan won’t work, Johnny. If you could blot out your war record, or if you knew some solid Union man you could trust to sell your cotton for you, why then——”

“There isn’t a man, Union or rebel, in Louisiana that I would trust to do work of that kind,” declared Rodney with emphasis. “I don’t say whether my father has any cotton or not; but if he has he would tell you Yanks to burn it and welcome before he would give any friend of his a chance to cheat him out of it. Who buys cotton in the city—the government?”

“No; speculators. The government grabs it without so much as saying ‘by your leave.’”

“Do you give those speculators military protection?”

“Not yet. They take their own chances, and protect themselves if they go outside the pickets. But they are working for protection, and some day they’ll get it.”

“Do they pay in gold?”

“Not as anybody has ever heard of,” replied the captain with a laugh. “Confederate scrip for one thing, and——”

“I wouldn’t look at it,” exclaimed Rodney. “I wouldn’t give a bale of good cotton for a cart-load of Confederate scrip.”

“A fine loyal grayback you are to talk that way about your country’s shinplasters,” said the captain with another hearty laugh. “If all rebel soldiers are like you, I don’t see why your armies didn’t fall to pieces long ago.”

“It is because they are held together by discipline that would drive Union soldiers into mutiny in less than a week,” said Rodney bitterly. “I’ll take to the woods with the rest of the outlaws before they shall ever have an opportunity to try it on me again, and I know hundreds of others who feel the same way. But I wish you would tell a sorry rebel how to change cotton into money. If you will, I may become a trader myself.”

“If by money you mean something besides Confederate rags, I must tell you that it is what you will not see until every rebel has laid down his arms and quit fighting the government, because all cotton brought within our lines has to be purchased on contracts for payment at the close of the war——”

“Then go ahead with your burning expedition,” said Rodney, who thought he had never heard anything quite so preposterous. “You’ll get mighty little cotton about here on those terms.”

“——at the close of the war,” continued the captain, paying no heed to the interruption, “because, if paid for in coin or green-backs, the money would be sure, sooner or later, to find its way into the rebel treasury. Your authorities will not steal their own money, for they know how worthless it is; but they’ll steal ours, and use it too, every chance they get. I suppose that darky out there at the bars can show me where the cotton is concealed?”

“He knows where every bale of it is,” answered Rodney. “He helped hide it.”

“He declares he don’t want to go to Baton Rouge with us, but if he acts as my guide I shall have to take him along, or you fellows who lose cotton will kill him.”

“And no doubt you will kill him if he refuses to act as your guide, so he is bound to be killed any way you fix it,” said Rodney in disgust. “He’ll not be harmed if he stays at home after you leave, and nobody knows it better than he does. Ask him and see.”

“Prepare to mount!” shouted the captain, thinking his men had wasted time enough at the well. “By the way,” he added, in a lower tone, “who’s your company, and why did he dig out in such haste when I rode up to the door? He’s a reb, I know it by the cut of his jib.”

“He’s a conscript I know, but he’s a deserter as well, and as good a Union man as you are. He was in pretty bad shape when I found him running from the hounds, but he is able to travel now, and if you will leave him here a few days longer he will be glad to take refuge inside your lines,” whispered Rodney, believing that the surest way for his patient to escape trouble was to give the captain opportunity to parole him then and there. “He hasn’t done any fighting, and never means to if he can help it.”

“Then he can stay and welcome, for all I care,” replied the captain. “I never run a man in as a prisoner unless I have reason to think he is dangerous.”

“Where did you find Mr. Randall’s black man, and how did you come to pick him up for a guide?” inquired Rodney.

“I don’t know that I ought to tell you, but didn’t one of your neighbors lose some cotton a while ago? His name is Randolph, and he wants us to look out for a worthless fellow named Lambert, who, he thinks, burned the cotton for him. He told me to go quietly up to Randall’s and ask for Mose, and I would find in him a good guide; but I was in no case to speak Randolph’s name in anybody’s hearing, and you see what pains I have taken not to do it. But I don’t care. It’s spite work on Randolph’s part.”

“Of course it is,” answered Rodney, who was so discouraged that he had half a mind to say that he would return to the army, and stay there until one side or the other was whipped into submission. “Mr. Randolph will work against everyone in the settlement now.”

“Very likely. Misery loves company, you know; and perhaps there are more men working against you than you think for. Do you know this Lambert, and has he any cause to be down on you?”

“I do know him, but he hasn’t the shadow of an excuse to be at enmity with me or any of my family,” said Rodney in surprise. And then it was on the end of his tongue to add that Lambert was working for him—standing guard over his cotton to see that no one troubled it, but he afterward had reason to be glad that he did not say it.

“Then he is jealous, or I should say envious, of you, because you are rich and he is poor,” said the captain, reining his horse about in readiness to follow his men, who were now riding toward the bars. “If he and his friends can sell your cotton so that they can pocket the money they’ll do it——”

“But they can’t. He shan’t,” exclaimed Rodney, who was utterly confounded. “He hasn’t brains enough to carry out such a bare-faced cheat, nor the power, either; though no doubt his will is good enough.”

“Randolph says it is; and he says further, that when Lambert finds that he can’t make anything out of that cotton, he’ll burn it. But I must be riding along. I’ll be back before dark, and if this deserter of yours would be glad of my escort, I’ll take him to Baton Rouge with me. What would your Home Guards do to you if they should jump down on you and find him here under your roof?”

“It’s a matter I don’t like to think of,” answered Rodney, “and I shall feel safer if you take him away. Good-by; but I can’t wish you good luck. I wish I had never seen you,” he added under his breath, “for you have robbed me of all my peace of mind. So Lambert is a traitor, is he? and my plan for gaining his good will hasn’t amounted to shucks. I’ll tell father about it the first thing in the morning, and would do it to-day if I didn’t want to see that captain when he returns.”

The deserter came out of his hiding-place when summoned, and eagerly promised to be on hand to accompany the Federal soldiers to Baton Rouge. He didn’t know what he would do for a living when he got there, he said, but it would be a great comfort to know that he would not be forced into the army to fight against the old flag. Rodney was too down-hearted to say anything encouraging, but he gave him a short note to Mr. Martin, who would see that he did not suffer while he was looking for employment. Then he walked out on the porch, for he wanted to be alone, and at that moment Ned Griffin rode into the yard.

“O Rodney!” he exclaimed. “Did that cotton-burning expedition stop here, and do you know that there’s the very mischief to pay? That nigger of Randall’s will never show them where his master’s cotton is hidden, but he’ll take them as straight as he can to yours and Walker’s. I tell you that cotton is gone up unless we do something.”

“Have you any suggestions to make?” asked Rodney.

“Let’s engage all the teams we can rake and scrape and haul it somewhere else,” said Ned at a venture.

“What good will that do? It’s in as fine a hiding-place now as there is in the country, and where are the wagons to come from? And the harness? It is all I can do to find gears for eight plough-mules.”

Ned rode away to turn his horse into the stable-yard, spent a long time in taking a drink at the well, and finally came back and sat down on the porch.

“What do you think of that scoundrel Lambert, anyway?” he inquired.

“That my plan for getting on his blind side did not work as well as we thought it was going to. He has got even with Tom Randolph for drawing a sword on him, and now he intends to get square with my father for threatening him with a nigger’s punishment.”

“I was with the mob that night,” said the young overseer angrily, “heard every word that was said, and know that your father never threatened Lambert with anything. He defended him and Tom as well, and sent me to warn them that they had better clear out while the way was open to them. And the last time I saw Lambert he pretended to be grateful to Mr. Gray for what he said and did that night. Oh, the villain!”

But it did no good to rail at Lambert for his perfidy, nor yet to discuss the situation, for the one was safely out of their reach, and talking and planning only served to show them how very gloomy and perplexing the other was. It was simply exasperating to know that they were utterly helpless, but that was the conclusion at which they finally arrived. Time might make all things right, or it might reduce Mr. Gray to poverty; and all they could do was to wait and see what it had in store for them.

Ned Griffin had been in Rodney’s company about two hours when one of the hounds suddenly gave tongue, and the whole pack went racing down to the bars. There was no one in sight, but after listening a moment the boys heard the tramping of a multitude of hoofs up the road in the direction in which the Federal soldiers had disappeared with Mr. Randall’s field-hand for a guide. As the boys arose to their feet the leading fours of the column came into view.

“Sure’s you live that’s them,” whispered Ned. “But what brought them back so soon?”

Rodney hadn’t the least idea, but suggested that possibly the negro guide had missed his way.

“If he did he missed it on purpose; but that’s a thing he could not be hired to do for fear the Yankees would shoot him,” replied Ned. “He may have given them the slip.”

“Never in this world,” answered Rodney emphatically. “When that darky left my bars he was riding double with one of the troopers, and there was a guard on each side of him. If he tried to run, he is dead enough now.”

The boys ran to the bars to wait for the captain, who rode at the head of the column, to approach within speaking distance, and when he did the words he addressed to them almost knocked them over. He appeared to be as pleasant and good-natured as usual, but some of the men behind him looked ugly.

“Why didn’t you tell me that that cotton down there in the swamp is guarded by a battalion of phantom bushwhackers?” said he.

“A battalion of what?” exclaimed Rodney, as soon as he could speak.

“Bushwhackers. Sharpshooters,” replied the captain.

“Home Guards?” inquired Ned.

“I don’t know about that, but I judge that they have your cotton under their protection, for all they tried to do was to kill the darky so that he couldn’t show us where it was. The men who rode in the rear of the line never heard the whistle of a bullet, although they sung around me and the nig pretty lively; and when the nig dropped they ceased firing on the instant. We charged the woods in every direction, but never saw one of them, nor did they make the least attempt to ambush us, as they could have done if they had felt like it.”

Rodney Gray had seldom been so astonished. He looked hard at the captain and did not know what to say. The whole thing was a mystery he could not explain on the spur of the moment. The captain sat on his horse in front of the bars while he talked, but the line passed on until the rear fours came up and halted. Then the boys saw that there was a rude litter slung between two of the horses, and that the form of Mr. Randall’s unfortunate field-hand was stretched upon it. Rodney walked up to the litter at once, but Ned timidly held back. There was a crimson stain on the bandage the negro wore about his head, and Ned could not endure the sight of blood.

“Oh, he isn’t dead,” said the captain, “but he’s too badly hurt to go any farther just now. Besides, we can’t move as rapidly as we would like as long as we have him with us, and I would take it as a favor if you will care for him until his master can be sent for.”

“Throw down those bars, Ned,” said Rodney, looking back over his shoulder as he started on a run for the house. “Bring him along and I will have a place fixed for him. Phantom bushwhackers!” he said to himself. “Now who do you suppose they were? Not Lambert and his gang certainly, for they haven’t the pluck to do such a thing; but I can think of no others who would be likely to turn bushwhackers. Now’s your chance for freedom and safety,” he added, pausing long enough to shake hands with the deserter and help him down from the porch. “Be ready to mount behind one of those Yanks when you get the word, and good luck to you.”

Rodney’s first care was to see that the wounded guide was made as comfortable as circumstances would permit, and his second to send one of his own field-hands to bring Mr. Randall and a doctor. After that, when he had answered a farewell signal from the deserter, and the last of the Federal column had disappeared down the road, he and Ned went back to the porch, and sat down to talk the matter over.

“I am as frightened now as I ever was in the army,” said Rodney honestly. “I never could stand a mystery.”

“There’s no mystery about this business,” replied Ned. “The Yanks lost their guide, and had sense enough to give up the search and come back. That’s all there is of it.”

“But who shot him?”

“Lambert and his crowd, and nobody else,” answered Ned positively. “If they were Home Guards, why were they so careful that their bullets should miss everyone except the darky? They didn’t want to hurt the soldiers; they only wanted to send them back, and they took the only method they could to do it.”

“Well, if it was Lambert, and he is determined to protect that cotton for his own profit, how am I going to haul it from the swamp myself if I ever have a chance to move it?” demanded Rodney. “Will he not be likely to bushwhack me too?”

“By gracious!” gasped Ned, sinking back in his chair, “this is a very pretty mess, I must say. I never once thought of such a thing; but if that’s his game, he’ll bushwhack you or anybody else who tries to move that cotton. However,” he added a moment later, his face brightening as a cheering thought passed through his mind, “what’s the odds? We are not ready to move the cotton yet, and until we are let’s take comfort in the thought that no one who wants to steal it, be he Union or rebel, will dare venture near it. Perhaps by the time you are ready to sell it, Lambert will have been bushwhacked himself. How do you intend to treat him from this time on?”

“As an enemy with whom I cannot afford to be at outs,” replied Rodney. “If he does any work for me I shall pay him for it; and although I shall not try to put any soldiers on his trail, I’ll go into the woods myself and hunt him down like a wild hog the minute I become satisfied that he is trying to play me false. I came to this plantation on purpose to watch father’s cotton, and I really wonder if Lambert imagines he can spirit it away without my knowing anything about it.”

“It’s the greatest scheme I ever heard of,” said Ned. “But it cannot be carried out. We’ve got to go to work in earnest now to put up the bacon and beef your father promised to give as the price of my exemption, and while we are doing it, it will be no trouble for us to keep an eye on that cotton.”

Rodney Gray afterward declared that work and plenty of it was all that kept him alive during the next three months, and it is a fact that as the year drew to a close, with anything but encouraging prospects for the ultimate success of the Union forces in the field, Rodney’s spirits fell to zero. Although he never confessed it to Ned Griffin, the latter knew, as well as he knew anything, that all Rodney’s hopes and his father’s were centred on the speedy putting down of the rebellion, but just now it looked as though that was going to be a hard, if not an impossible, thing to do. “Burnside’s repulse at Fredericksburg in the East had its Western counterpart in Sherman’s defeat on the Yazoo, and indeed the whole year presented no grand results in favor of the national armies except the capture of New Orleans.” But if Rodney had only known it, some things, many of which took place hundreds of miles away and on deep water, were slowly but surely working together for his good. He knew that General Banks had relieved General Butler in command of the Department of the Gulf; that he had an army of thirty thousand men and a fleet of fifty-one vessels under his command; that his object in coming was to “regulate the civil government of Louisiana, to direct the military movements against the rebellion in that State and in Texas, and to co-operate in the opening of the Mississippi by the reduction of Port Hudson,” which was on the east bank of the river twenty-five miles above Baton Rouge. As he straightway made the latter place his base of operations, and gradually brought there an army of twenty-five thousand men, Mooreville and all the surrounding country came within his grasp. Major Morgan and his fifty veterans took a hasty leave, Camp Pinckney was abandoned, and Confederate scouting parties were seldom seen at Rodney’s plantation and Ned’s, although it was an everyday occurrence for companies of blue-coats to stop at one place or the other and make inquiries about the “Johnnies” that were supposed to be lurking in the neighborhood. They never said “cotton” once, and this led Ned Griffin to remark that perhaps the new general had driven the speculators away from Baton Rouge and did not intend to allow any trading in his department.

“Don’t say that out loud, or you will give me the blues again!” exclaimed Rodney. “If it gets to Lambert’s ears, good-by cotton.”

“I didn’t think of that,” answered Ned, frightened at the bare suggestion of such a misfortune. “It will be much more to our interest to make Lambert believe, if we can, that traders will be thicker than dewberries the minute Port Hudson and Vicksburg are taken. That will make him hold his hand if anything will.”

As to Lambert, he “showed up” as often as he stood in need of any supplies, and sometimes loitered about for half a day, as if waiting for the boys to question him concerning a matter that, for reasons of his own, he did not care to touch upon himself. He would have given something to know what they thought of the “phantom bushwhackers” and their methods, but Rodney and Ned never said a word to him about it. The negro guide, who was more frightened than hurt, quickly recovered from his injuries, and within a day or two after he was taken to his master’s house ran away to the freedom he knew was awaiting him in Baton Rouge, and that made one less to tell where the cotton was concealed.

“I suppose the next bushwhacker will be a fellow about my size,” was what Rodney often said to himself. “I have half a mind to pounce on Lambert the next time he comes here and take him to Baton Rouge, but I don’t know whether that would be the best thing to do or not, and my father can’t advise me.” Then he would recall the Iron Duke’s famous ejaculation, and adapt it to his own circumstances by adding, “Oh, that a Union man or the end would come!”

Since he was so positive that a Union man was the friend he needed, it would seem that Rodney ought not to have been at a loss to find him right there in the settlement. If there were any faith to be put in what he saw and heard every time he went to Mooreville and Baton Rouge, there were no other sort of men in the country—not one who had ever been a Confederate or expressed the least sympathy for those who openly advocated secession. According to their own story, scraps of which came to Rodney’s ears now and then, Mr. Randolph and Tom had done little but talk down secession and stand up for the Union ever since Fort Sumter was fired upon, and Mr. Biglin, the red-hot rebel who put the bloodhounds on the trail of the escaped prisoners Rodney was guiding to the river, declared that his well-known love for the old flag had nearly cost him his life. He was glad to see Banks’ army in Baton Rouge, he said, for now he could speak his honest sentiments without having his sleep disturbed by the fear that his rebel neighbors would break into his house before morning and hang him to the plates of his own gallery. The country was full of cowardly, hypocritical men like these, and what troubled Rodney and Ned more than anything else was the fact that they seemed to have more influence and be on closer terms with the Federals than did the honest rebels who had ceased to fight because they knew they were whipped. Rodney’s friend, Mr. Martin, who lived in Baton Rouge and kept a sharp eye on these “converted rebels,” whose hatred for the Union and everybody who believed in it was as intense and bitter as it had ever been, told him that Mr. Biglin and others like him were using every means in their power and making all sorts of false affidavits to secure trade permits, and seemed in a fair way to get them too. Indeed, so certain were they that they would succeed in their efforts, that they were going out some day to look at the cotton in the Mooreville district, and see what the prospects were for hauling it out. They were even engaging teams to do the work. They were not to have military protection, Mr. Martin said, but that was scarcely necessary, for the Union cavalry had swept the country of Home Guards and conscript soldiers for a hundred miles around.

“But the Union cavalry hasn’t cleared the country of the bushwhackers who shot Mr. Randall’s nigger,” said Ned Griffin, who always had a cheering word to say when Rodney was the most disheartened. “If Mr. Martin’s story is true, I hope Biglin will come himself and give them a fair chance at him.”

And Mr. Biglin did come himself, although Rodney thought he was too much of a coward to venture so far into the country. He and half a dozen other civilians rode into the yard one day and asked Rodney for a drink of water, but that was only done to give them a chance to draw from him a little information about cotton. Rodney greeted them in as friendly a manner as he thought the occasion called for, and conducted them around the house to the well.

“I tell you it seems good to get out in the fresh air once more, and to know that while here I am in no danger of being gobbled up by a conscript officer and hustled away to fight under a flag I have always despised,” said Mr. Biglin, putting his hands into his pockets and walking up and down in front of the well. “So you have turned overseer, have you, Rodney?”

“I believe that was what I told you on the day I saw you in Mr. Turnbull’s front yard,” was the answer. “I mean just before that darky of yours came up——”

“Yes, yes; I remember all about it now,” said Mr. Biglin hastily. And then he tried to turn the conversation into another channel, for fear that Rodney would go on to tell that the information that darky brought was what caused Mr. Biglin to put the hounds on the trail of the escaped Union prisoners. “Fine place you have here. A little rough, of course, but it’s new yet. And I presume it suits you, for, if I remember rightly, you always were fond of shooting and riding to the hounds. Have you any cotton?”

“Not a bale. Not a pound.”

Mr. Biglin looked surprised, and so did his companions. The former looked hard at the boy for a moment, and then changed the form of his inquiry.

“Oh, ah!” said he. “Has your father got any?”

“Perhaps you had better go and ask him,” replied Rodney.

“That’s just what we did not more than an hour ago, but he wouldn’t give us any satisfaction.”

“Then you have good cheek to come here expecting me to give you any,” said the young overseer, growing angry. “My father is quite competent to attend to his own business.”

“I suppose he is. Why, yes; of course; but what’s the use of cutting off your nose to spite your face? We know you have cotton and plenty of it; and since you can’t sell it yourselves——”

“Why can’t we?” interposed Rodney.

Mr. Biglin acted as though he had no patience with one who could ask so foolish a question.

“Because of your secession record,” said he. “You were in the Southern army, and your father is a rebel.”

“So are you,” said Rodney bluntly.

“I may have appeared to be at times in order to save my life, but I never was a secessionist at heart,” said Mr. Biglin loftily. “I don’t care who hears me say it, I am for the Union now and forever, one and—and undivided. And General Banks’ provost marshal, or whatever you call him, knows it.”

“If he believes it, he is the biggest dunderhead in the world and isn’t fit for the position he holds,” exclaimed Rodney. “I know you to be a vindictive, red-hot rebel, and since things have turned out as they have, I am sorry I did not tell the —th Michigan’s boys that you put the hounds on——”

“I never did it in this wide world,” protested Mr. Biglin, trying to look astonished, but turning white instead.

“Never did what?” inquired Rodney.

“Put hounds on anybody’s trail. You had better be careful what you say.”

“You don’t show your usual good sense in talking that way,” said one of the civilians. “Our friend has influence enough to make you suffer for it if he feels so inclined.”

“And I had influence enough to make his house a heap of ashes long ago if I had felt like it,” retorted Rodney. “I can prove every word I say any day and shall be glad of the chance.” And then he wondered what he would do if his visitors should take him at his word. He knew that he could not prove his assertions without mentioning the name of Mrs. Turnbull, and that was something he could not be made to do until he had her full and free consent.

“You are quite at liberty to tell what you know about me and my record during this war,” observed Mr. Biglin, as he swung himself upon his horse and turned the animal’s head toward the bars, “and you may have to tell it, whether you want to or not.”

With this parting shot, which he hoped would leave Rodney in a very uncomfortable frame of mind, Mr. Biglin rode away, followed by his friends, and passing through the bars turned up the road leading toward the swamp in which Mr. Gray’s cotton was concealed. No sooner had they disappeared than Ned Griffin, who was always on the watch and knew when Rodney had visitors he did not want to see, threw down the bars and rode into the yard.

CHAPTER V.
THE COTTON THIEVES.

“Who are those men, and what did they want?” inquired Ned, as he got off his horse at the foot of the steps. “Are they cotton traders?”

“I wish I hadn’t gone at them quite so rough,” replied Rodney. “You know what a red-hot rebel Biglin has always been, don’t you?”

“I should say so. If he could have his way he’d hang every Union man in the country.”

“Well, he had the impudence to declare in my presence, not more than five minutes ago, that he’d always been strong for the Union and dead against secession, and it made me so indignant that I said things which drove him away before he had time to make his business known. But he told me he had questioned my father about cotton and got no satisfaction.”

“And did he think you would give it to him when your father would not?” demanded Ned.

“He and his friends seemed to think so, but I gave them to understand—Great Scott!”

“Hallo! What’s come over you all on a sudden?” exclaimed Ned, as Rodney jumped to his feet and gazed anxiously up the road in the direction in which Mr. Biglin and his party had just disappeared.

“Who knows but I have let them go to their death?” answered Rodney. “They don’t know that one party who tried to find that cotton was fired upon in the woods, and I was so provoked at Biglin that I forgot to tell them.”

“W-h-e-w!” whistled Ned. “I never thought of it either. Well, let them go on and find it out for themselves. They wouldn’t have believed you if you had told them. They would have said right away that you were trying to keep them out of the woods, and that would have made them all the more determined to go in. I should be sorry to see any of them shot, but now that I am here I’m going to stay with you and see the thing out.”

Nothing could have suited Rodney Gray better. He was lonely and depressed and felt the need of cheerful company, so he went with Ned when the latter turned his horse into the stable-yard, and repeated to him every word of the conversation that took place while Mr. Biglin and his friends were at the well.

“There’s just one thing about it,” said Ned, when he had heard the story. “If Biglin hasn’t already got a permit to trade he is certain as he can be that he’s going to have it, and that’s what brought him out here. But I can’t imagine what he meant when he said you might be obliged to tell what you know about him and his record.”

“No more can I, but I should be glad to do it if it were not for bringing Mrs. Turnbull’s name into the muss. Has Biglin got any money, do you think, or does he intend to pay for his cotton in promises? If I were in father’s place I would not take his note for a picayune, for there’s no telling where Biglin will be at the close of the war.”

“That’s so,” assented Ned. “But we’ll not worry about money until we see some in prospect, will we? We haven’t lost the cotton yet.”

And they didn’t lose it that day and neither did Mr. Biglin and his party find it, for the very thing happened that Rodney was afraid of. He and Ned sat on the porch for an hour or more, conversing in low tones and waiting for and dreading something, they could scarcely have told what, when the clatter of hoofs up the road set the hounds’ tongues in motion and took them out to the bars in a body. It took Rodney and Ned out there too, and when they gained the middle of the road they saw three horses bearing down upon them with their bridles and stirrups flying loose in the wind and their saddles empty. A little farther up the highway were a couple of mounted men, who were bending low over the pommels of their saddles, plying their whips as rapidly as they could make their arms move up and down, and a few rods behind them were two more riderless horses. Both men and animals appeared to be frightened out of their senses. The leading horses would not stop, but dashed frantically into the bushes by the roadside rather than permit the two boys to capture them, and the men, as well as the horses that brought up the rear, went by like the wind, and without in the least slackening their headlong flight.

“Well, I do think in my soul! What’s up?” whispered Ned, who had dodged nimbly out of the road to escape being run down.

“There were seven in the party, and only two have returned,” murmured Rodney.

“They must have seen something dreadful in there,” faltered Ned.

“Beyond a doubt they have been fired upon, but I don’t believe they saw anything,” answered Rodney. “They heard the whistle of bullets and buckshot, most likely, and it scared them half to death. Come on. Let’s hurry.”

“Where are you going?” demanded Ned, as Rodney turned about and ran toward the house.

“After my horse. There are five men missing, and it may be that some of them were shot. And even if they were unhorsed and not hurt at all, they need help if they are as badly frightened as the two that just went by.”

Not being a soldier, Ned Griffin was in no haste to ride into a dark swamp to brave an invisible bushwhacker, who might be as ready to shoot him as anybody else, but when Rodney broke into a run and started for the stable-yard, he kept close at his heels. The two saddled their horses with all haste, and with the eager and excited hounds for a body-guard, rode through the bars just in time to meet the two survivors of Mr. Biglin’s party, who had at last found courage enough to stop their frantic steeds and come back.

“O Rodney; this is an awful day for us!” cried one of the frightened men. “I wish we had never heard of that cotton.”

“The cotton is all right if you will keep your thievish hands off from it,” replied Rodney. “What’s the matter with you, and where are Mr. Biglin and the rest?”

“Dead or prisoners, the last one of them. There’s a whole regiment in there, and they opened on us before we had left the road half a mile behind.”

“A whole regiment of what?”

“Indians, judging by the way they yelled, though I suppose they were Yankee soldiers out on a scout.”

“Not much!” exclaimed Rodney.

“How do you know what they were? You didn’t see them.”

“Did you?”

“Well, no; but I heard them yell, and I heard their bullets singing, too. The swamp is full of them.”

“If they were Federal scouts you would have seen them,” said Rodney. “They would have closed around you before you had a chance to draw the revolver I see sticking out of your coat pocket.”

“It’s empty,” said the man, producing the weapon. “I never was in a fight before and never want to be again; but I tried to give them as good as they sent.”

“If you did not see any of the attacking party, what did you shoot at?”

“I fired in the direction from which the yells sounded, and so did all of us. As for the bullets, you couldn’t tell which way they came from, for they clipped the trees on all sides. Where are you and Griffin going?”

“Into the swamp to see if we can be of use to anybody.”

“I really wish you would, for I wouldn’t dare go back there myself. If they were not Yankees, who were they?”

“Didn’t you just tell me that I wasn’t there?” asked Rodney.

“But all the same you have a pretty good idea who they were, and you don’t want to bring yourself into trouble by shielding them.”

“I am not trying to shield anybody,” answered Rodney.

“Do you think they were citizens who tried to kill us because they didn’t want us to find their cotton?” inquired the second man, who had not spoken before.

“If you had a fortune hidden out there in the woods, would you let anybody steal it from you if you could help it?” asked Rodney in reply. “I don’t think you would.”

“But we expect every day to get a permit to trade in cotton,” said the first speaker, “and that will give us license to take it wherever we can find it.”

“I reckon not,” said the boy hotly. “General Banks has a right to order his soldiers to take cotton or anything else for the benefit of his government or to cripple the Confederacy, but he has no shadow of a right to license stealing by civilians, and I don’t think he will do it. If he does, there will be some of the liveliest fighting around here he ever heard of.”

“If I thought those villains in there were citizens I’d——”

“You’d what?” said Rodney, when the man paused and looked at his companion. “Do you want to kick up another civil war right here in your own neighborhood? Both of you own property, and if you desire to save it you will take care what you do. If you will go into the house and sit down for an hour or two we may be back with news of your friends.”

“I’ll not do it,” replied the man, who had not yet recovered from his fright, “for there’s no telling how soon those ruffians may come this way. I will ride into Baton Rouge and send some soldiers out here.”

So saying he and his companion wheeled their horses and galloped away, and the two boys rode on toward the swamp.

“Now look at you!” said Ned, when they were once more alone. “You have paved the way for the neatest kind of a fuss. Did you notice what Mr. Louden said about sending soldiers out here?”

“I did; but when he tries it I think he’ll find he has not been hired to take the command of the Department of the Gulf out of the hands of General Banks. If Banks is anything like the generals I have served under he’ll not take suggestions from anybody, much less a civilian. I told the truth when I hinted that that cotton might have been protected by citizens, for that is what Lambert and his gang are.”

“But Louden thought you meant planters,” urged Ned.

“I can’t help what he thought; and I noticed, too, that he suspected me of shielding the bushwhackers, because I would not tell who they were. Oh, I know we shall see fun before we hear the last of that cotton, but we’ll hold fast to it as long as we can.”

The boys rode rapidly while they talked, and in a few minutes turned off the road and plunged into the tangled recesses of as gloomy a piece of timber as could have been found anywhere—just the finest place in the world for an ambuscade, as Rodney remarked when he led the way into it. They could not see ten feet in any direction, but they heard something before they had gone a mile into the swamp. The hounds gave tongue savagely and dashed away in a body, a wild shriek of terror arose from a thicket close in front of Rodney’s horse, and in the next instant up bobbed Mr. Biglin. But he didn’t show any of the courage of which he had boasted. His face was very white, and his empty hands were held high above his head. He had as fair a view of Rodney’s face as he ever had in his life, but was so badly frightened that he did not recognize him.

“Don’t you see that I surrender?” he yelled. “Call off your bloodhounds.”

Mr. Biglin Surrenders.

“All right,” said the boy, who rather enjoyed the spectacle. “The dogs won’t hurt you. Come out of the bushes and tell us all about it.”

“O Rodney, is that you?” exclaimed Mr. Biglin, but he wasn’t quite sure of it, and didn’t think it safe to lower his uplifted hands. “Where are they? They have been beating the woods in every direction to find me.”

“They? Who?”

“I am sure I don’t know, but there’s a regiment of them. They shot down every horse in the party before we knew there was danger near, and then set out to hunt us at their leisure. Have you seen them? Where are they now?”

“Come out and tell us where the other four are,” said Rodney, who had by this time satisfied himself that Mr. Biglin had escaped uninjured. “Your horses are all right, and so are Miles and Louden. Ned and I had a short talk with them not more than an hour ago.”

“I am surprised to hear it,” said Mr. Biglin, with a long-drawn sigh of relief. “I was sure they had all been killed.” He put down his hands and came out of his concealment as he spoke, but he stepped cautiously as if afraid of making a noise, and cast timid glances on all sides of him. “It’s just awful to be shot at in that cold-blooded way, isn’t it? I don’t see how you stood it so long in the army.”

“Do you imagine that I stayed there and let the Yanks pop at me because I thought it was funny?” demanded Rodney. “I stayed so long for the reason that I couldn’t help myself. Miles and Louden have gone on to the city, and I reckon your horses must be there by this time if they kept on running.”

“And did the horses escape also?” said Mr. Biglin, who looked as though he didn’t know whether to believe it or not. “It’s really wonderful how any of us came out alive.”

Instead of replying Rodney threw back his head and shouted “Hey-youp!” so loudly that the woods rang with the sound.

“What made you do that?” said Mr. Biglin in a frightened whisper, at the same time backing toward the thicket from which he had just emerged. “Do you want to show the enemy where we are?”

“No; but I want to let your four friends know where we are.”

He raised his war-whoop a second time, following it up by calling out the names of the missing men and telling them to come on, for there was nothing to be afraid of. There was a long silence—so long that Rodney began to fear the party had become widely separated during the hurried stampede of its members; but after a while a faint answering shout came to his ears, then another and another, and finally he could hear the missing men making their way through the bushes in his direction. When they came up it was found that not one of them had been injured by the shower of bullets which had whistled about their ears thicker than any hailstones they ever saw, but they were all pale and nervous, and begged Rodney and Ned to take them out of the woods by the shortest and easiest route. Seeing that two of them were almost ready to drop with fear or exhaustion, the boys gave them their horses and led the way on foot. Not a word was said until they found themselves safe in the road, and then Mr. Biglin recovered his courage and the use of his tongue.

“Quite a thrilling experience for men who do not claim to be fighters,” said he, taking off his hat and wiping away the sweat which stood on his forehead in big drops. “And a most wonderful escape for all of us. If I’d had the least suspicion that such a thing was going to happen, you wouldn’t have caught me going into that swamp. But the men who fired on us, whoever they are, must be punished for their audacity. They couldn’t have been Union troops, for as soon as we recovered from the astonishment and panic into which we were thrown by their first volley, we shouted to them that we had a permit from General Banks, but it didn’t do any good.”

“It did harm, though,” remarked one of his companions, “for I am positive that their yells grew louder and that the bullets came much thicker than before. Have you boys any idea who they were?”

This was a question that neither of them intended to answer if he could help it. If they said what they thought, Mr. Biglin would carry their story straight to the Federal provost marshal, or to someone else in authority in Baton Rouge, and it might lead to something that would end in bloodshed. Lambert’s actions said as plainly as words that if he couldn’t profit by the sale of that cotton himself, nobody else should lay hands upon it, and having driven away two parties who had tried to discover its hiding-place, it was barely possible that he might have gained courage enough to resist soldiers, if any were sent into the swamp to drive him out. Lambert was showing himself a good friend just now, however disagreeable and dangerous he might prove to be by and by, and Rodney did not want General Banks to send troopers after him. When the Union man he was waiting for “turned up,” the general might rid the settlement of Lambert’s presence as soon as he pleased.

“If I didn’t know that Tom Randolph’s company of Home Guards was broken up, I should blame them for this day’s work,” said one of Mr. Biglin’s companions.

“How do you know the company was broken up?” inquired Rodney.

“Why, I heard they were all conscripted long ago.”

“That may be; but they didn’t all go to Camp Pinckney. Some of them took to the woods.”

“But even if they would fire upon their old friends and neighbors, which isn’t probable, they have no interest in protecting the cotton in the swamp, for they don’t own a dollar’s worth of it.”

“I don’t care who they are,” said Mr. Biglin. “They will find that the arm of our government is long enough to reach them wherever they hide themselves.”

“Our government!” repeated Rodney. “Which one do you mean?”

“There is but one, young man, and you rebels can’t break it up, try as hard as you will.”

It made Rodney angry to hear Mr. Biglin talk in this strain, but before he could frame a suitable rejoinder the planter switched him off on another track by inquiring:

“Now, how are we to get to the city?”

“I am sure I don’t know unless you walk,” answered Rodney.

“Can’t you raise five saddle nags on your place?”

“No, sir. And if I could, I wouldn’t let them go inside the Yankee lines. I’d never see them again.”

“I give you my word that I will take the best of care of them.”

“You couldn’t take any sort of care of them. In less than five minutes after you reached the city my horses would be gone, and when you found them again, if you ever did, they would have some company’s brand on them. I know what I am talking about, for I have been a cavalryman myself. I have known regiments in the same brigade to steal from one another.”

“In that case wouldn’t the brand show where the horse belonged?”

“It might if it was let alone, but it is easy to change it. I stole a horse from company I once, and when he was found in my possession a week or two afterward, there was my company letter D on his flank as plain as the nose on your face.”

“And didn’t you have to give him up to his rightful owner?”

“Course not. I said if he wasn’t my horse, how came that letter D branded on him, and that settled it. Won’t you go in and rest a few minutes?”

As Rodney said this he waved his hand toward the house, whose front door stood invitingly open, but Mr. Biglin replied that he did not care to sit down until he was out of sight of the swamp, and beyond the reach of the terrible Home Guards who made their hiding-place there. So he and his companions walked on, and Rodney and Ned turned into the yard.

“Our government!” Rodney said over and over again while they were at the well watering their horses. “He’d give everything he’s got if he could see it broken up this minute.”

“Of course he would, but he and his kind stand higher with the Federals than you do,” replied Ned. “Now, all we can do is to possess our souls in patience and wait for the next act on the programme. Let’s see if Mr. Biglin’s government will send soldiers to protect him in his cotton-stealing.”

It was very easy for Ned to talk of waiting patiently, but it was a hard thing to do. He and Rodney looked anxiously for the appearance of the cavalry that Mr. Biglin and one of his friends had threatened to send against the men who had driven them from the swamp, but they never came. They saw and talked with a good many troopers, who drank all the milk they could find and asked about the Johnnies that were supposed to be “snooping around” in that part of the country, but to the boys’ great relief they did not say a word about cotton or Home Guards, and Rodney hoped he had seen the last of Mr. Biglin. He was ready to make terms with a genuine Yankee who would offer him sixty cents a pound for his father’s cotton, but he wanted nothing to do with converted rebels. He and Ned made several trips to the city, bringing out each time some things that were not contraband of war, and some others that would have caused the prompt confiscation of his whole wagon load if they had been discovered, but his friend Mr. Martin, on whom he relied for information of every sort, could not give him any advice on the subject that was nearest to his heart.

“The city is full of men who are working their level best to get permits,” said he, “but I am told it takes lots of influence and a clean record to get them.”

“Then Biglin will never have the handling of my father’s cotton,” said Rodney with a sigh of satisfaction. “His record is as bad as mine.”

“Much worse,” answered Mr. Martin, “for you never went back on your friends and became a spy and informer. That is just what that man Biglin has done, but I have reason to think he isn’t making much at it. Someone has been telling true stories about him, and the provost marshal knows his history like a book. O Rodney, why didn’t you keep out of the rebel army and proclaim yourself a Union man at the start, no matter whether you were or not. You would have plain sailing now.”

Rodney laughed and said it was too late to think of that; and besides, why didn’t Mr. Martin proclaim himself a Union man at the start? Perhaps he wouldn’t have been so closely watched.

Rodney saw and talked with Lambert about three times a week, but the ex-Home Guard did not volunteer any information regarding his doings in the swamp, and the boy took care not to ask him for any. He never inquired how or where the man lived, how many companions he had, whether or not they ever held communication with their friends in Mooreville—in fact, Lambert more than once complained to Ned Griffin that Rodney did not seem to care any more for the conscripts who were watching night and day to protect his father’s cotton than he did for the wild hogs he was shooting for his winter’s supply of bacon. When Rodney first began hunting these hogs it was with the expectation that every pound of meat he secured would have to be turned over to the agents of the Confederate government as the price of Ned Griffin’s exemption; but when General Banks began massing his army at Baton Rouge with a view of operating against Port Hudson, and the country roundabout had been cleared of rebel soldiers and conscript officers, Rodney hadn’t troubled himself much about the exemption bacon. He was glad to believe he would not be called on to pay it.

Affairs went on in a very unsatisfactory way until the middle of February before any event that was either exciting or interesting occurred to break the monotony, if we except one single thing—the Emancipation Proclamation. Of course the news that the slaves had been freed created something of an excitement at first, especially among such men as Lambert and his outlaws who never had the price of a pickaninny in their pockets, but it had little effect upon Rodney Gray and his father, because they had been looking for it for six months. In September President Lincoln told the Southern people very plainly that if they did not lay down their arms and return to their allegiance he would declare their slaves free, and now he had kept his promise. Rodney remembered how he had laughed at his cousin Marcy, and how angry he was at him when the latter declared that if the South tried to break up the government she would lose all her negroes, but now he saw that Marcy was right. More than that, he knew that the North had the power and the will to enforce the proclamation. Mr. Martin gave him a copy of it and he took it home with him, intending to read it to his negroes; but the news reached the plantation before he did, and he found the field-hands gathered about the kitchen waiting for him.

“Is Moster Linkum done sot we black ones all free?” they demanded in chorus, as Rodney rode among them.

“Who told you anything about it?” he asked, in reply.

“De cutes’ little catbird you ebber see done sot hisself up dar on de ridge-pole, an’ sung it to we black ones,” answered the driver; and then they all shouted and laughed at the top of their voices. “Is we free sure ’nough?” added the driver.

“That depends upon whether you are or not,” answered Rodney, taking the proclamation from his pocket and holding it aloft so that all could see it. “In the first place, who owns this part of Louisiana right around here? In whose possession is it?”

“De Yankees, bress the Lawd,” said the negroes, with one voice.

“Then you are not free, and Mr. Lincoln says so.”

“Why, Moss Rodney, please sar, how come dat?” stammered the driver, and all the black faces around him took on a look of deep disappointment and sorrow.

“I have Mr. Lincoln’s own words for it,” replied Rodney. “This paper says, in effect, that the slaves are free in all States in rebellion, except in such parts as are held by the armies of the United States. Do the Yankees around here belong to the armies of the United States, and are they holding this country—this part of the State? Then you will not be free until the rebels come in and drive them out.”

“O Lawd! O Lawd!” moaned the driver. “Den we uns won’t nebber be free. Dem rebels won’t luf us go.”

“That’s what I think, so you had better dig out while you have the chance. You are bound to have your freedom some day, and you might as well take it now. Don’t go off like thieves in the night, but come up here boldly and shake hands with me as you would if you were going back to the home plantation. And when you get sick of the Yankees and their ways, come back, and I will treat you as well as I ever did. Bob, you had better go for one. You don’t earn your salt here.”

This was all Rodney had to say regarding the Emancipation Proclamation, but it was more than his darkies bargained for. While they were glad to know that they were free men and women, they were not glad to see Rodney so perfectly willing to let them go. He didn’t care a snap whether they went or stayed, and that made them all the more anxious to stay where they were sure of getting plenty to eat and clothes to wear. Bob and one other worthless negro took Rodney at his word, and left the plantation that very afternoon, but they did not go to the house to bid him good-by. They packed their bundles in secret, and slipped away “like thieves in the night”; but, before they had been gone two hours, Lambert marched them back to the bars at the muzzle of his rifle.

CHAPTER VI.
THE MAN HE WANTED TO SEE.

“What in the world did you bring those useless fellows back here for?” was the way in which Rodney Gray welcomed Lambert when he marched the two negroes up to the porch where he was sitting. “I was in hopes I had seen the last of them.”

“Why, dog-gone it, they’re yourn, an’ I jest want to see if what they have been tellin’ me is the truth,” said Lambert in a surprised tone. “I found ’em pikin’ along the highway with them packs onto their backs an’ no passes into their pockets——”

“Don’t need no passes no mo’,” interrupted Bob in a surly voice. “I am jes as free as you be, Mistah Lambert.”

“Jest listen at the nigger’s imperdence!” cried Lambert, astonished and angry because Rodney did not at once take Bob to task for his freedom of speech. “This is what comes of havin’ so many Yankees prowlin’ about the country.”

“That’s about the size of it. Bob is as free as you or I, and here is the paper that says so,” declared Rodney, taking a printed copy of the proclamation from his pocket.

“Who writ that there paper, an’ where did you get it?”

“The city is flooded with copies of it, and the first scouting party that rides through here will scatter it right and left among the negroes. President Lincoln wrote it.”

“What right’s he got to do anything of the sort? The niggers don’t belong to him.”

“Well, he’s done it, any way, and you and your friends will have to come out of the swamp and go to work if you hope to get anything to eat. My father says we can’t help ourselves, and that’s why I talked to Bob and the rest the way I did a while ago.”

“But I aint agreein’ to no such arrangement,” replied Lambert, who could scarcely have felt more aggrieved and insulted if he had been the largest slaveholder in the State.

“Nobody asked my father if he would agree to it, either; but he’ll have to take war as it comes, and so will you and all of us. The blacks are lost to us and you will have to go to work; I don’t see any way out of it. You might as well turn your prisoners loose and let them go among the Yanks if they want to.”

The ignorant Lambert could not yet understand the situation, for it took him a long time to get new things through his head, and this was the first he had heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. He looked hard at Rodney to see if he was in earnest, then swung his clubbed rifle in the air and shouted “Git!” at the top of his voice; whereupon the frightened darkies took to their heels and disappeared in an instant. But they did not retreat in the direction of the road. They made the best of their way to their cabins in the quarter and hid themselves there. When they were out of sight Lambert put his rifle under his arm and pulled out his cob pipe.

“I’m more of a secessioner now nor I ever was before,” said he. “We uns have just got to whop in this war, kase if we don’t our niggers will be gone, an’ where’ll I get a job of overseein’?”

“You’ll never be an overseer again,” answered Rodney. “You will have to go into the field and hoe cotton and cane yourself.”

“Not by no means I won’t,” said Lambert fiercely. “That there is nigger’s work, an’ I can’t seem to stoop to it. It don’t make no sort of difference to rich folks like you how the war ends, kase you’ve got cotton, an’ cotton is money these times. I aint got nary thing.”

Lambert watched Rodney out of the corners of his eyes while he was applying a lighted match to the tobacco with which he had filled his pipe, but the boy had nothing to say. He thought there was a threat hidden under Lambert’s last words.

“There’s one thing about it,” the latter continued after a little pause, “if we get whopped I won’t be the only poor man there is in Louisiany, tell your folks.”

With this parting shot he turned his mule about and rode out of the yard. And Rodney, angry as he was, let him go. He knew now just what he had to expect from the ex-Home Guard and made the mental resolution that, if his father would consent, he would be prepared to make a prisoner of Lambert the next time he met him.

“Something of the sort must be done, and before long, too,” thought Rodney when he went to bed that night, “or the first thing we know our cotton will go the way Mr. Randolph’s did. If the cotton was mine I would promise to hand Lambert a few hundred dollars as soon as it was sold, but then he is so treacherous I couldn’t put any faith in his promises. I wish he had kept away from here to-day. His visit worried me more than Lincoln’s proclamation.”

Rodney intended to go home and lay the matter before his father as soon as he had seen the hands fairly at work in the morning; but just as he arose from his breakfast Mr. Gray rode into the yard, accompanied by a stranger whose appearance and actions attracted Rodney’s attention at once and amused him not a little. He sat on a bare-back mule (Mr. Gray’s fine horses and saddles had disappeared with Breckenridge’s men), with his shoulders humped up, his head drawn down between them, his arms stiffened and his hands braced firmly against the mule’s withers, and his broad back bent in the form of an arch. He wore a blue flannel suit, a black slouch hat, a flowing neck-handkerchief tied low on his breast, and finer shoes and stockings than Rodney himself had been in the habit of wearing of late. He had a sharp blue eye, a bronzed face, a heavy blond mustache, and gazed about him with the air of one who might know a thing or two, even if he didn’t know how to ride a mule bare-back. Rodney hastened down the steps to welcome his father, and then looked inquiringly at the young man in blue, who placed his clenched hands on his hips and stared hard at Rodney.

“De oberseer he gib us trouble,

An’ he dribe us round a spell;

We’ll lock him up in de smokehouse cellar,

Wid de key frown in de well.

De whip is los’, de hand-cuff broken,

An’ ole moster’ll have his pay;

He’s ole ’nough, big ’nough, an’ oughter knowed better

Dan to went an’ run away,”

sang the stranger in a melodious tenor voice. “Hallo, Johnny!”

“Hallo, yourself,” replied Rodney. He was so astonished at this strange greeting that he did not know what else to say. He gazed earnestly at the singer, but there was no smile of recognition under the blond mustache, though the blue eyes twinkled merrily. Then he looked toward his father for an explanation, but that gentleman, who had by this time dismounted, stood with his folded arms resting on his mule’s back, and had not a word of explanation to offer.

“You are a very nice-looking rebel, I must say,” were the visitor’s next words.

“I am aware of it,” returned Rodney; “but they are the best I’ve got to my back.”

“I was speaking of you and not of your clothes,” said the stranger hastily. “My good mother away up in North Carolina long ago taught me——”

“Jack! O Jack!” shouted Rodney joyfully. With one jump he reached his cousin’s side, and seizing his outstretched hand in both his own, fairly dragged him to the ground.

“Easy, easy!” cautioned Mr. Gray. “That’s Jack, but he isn’t quite as sound as he was the last time you met him.”

“I am overjoyed to see you after so long a separation,” said Rodney, in some degree moderating the energy of his hand-shaking. “How did you leave Marcy and his mother? and has Marcy always been true to his colors, as he so often declared he would be, no matter what happened? How came you here when nobody dreamed of seeing you, and where have you been to get hurt?”

“I have been offsetting your work,” replied Jack, rolling alongside Rodney, sailor fashion, as the latter slipped an arm through his own and led him to the porch. “You worked fifteen months to make this unholy rebellion successful, and I worked sixteen months and more to put it down; so you might as well have stayed at home with your mother.”

“Then you have been at sea?” exclaimed Rodney.

“Correct. There’s where I belong, you know. And I heard in a roundabout way that Marcy has had a brief experience, also. He was pilot on one of our gunboats during the fights at Roanoke Island, but where he is now I haven’t the least idea. It is a long time since I got a word from home,” said the sailor sadly. “I am on my way there now, and figuring to make some money by the trip. I am dead broke.”

“Haven’t you a discharge?”

“A sort of one, but nary cent of cash.”

“How does that come? Why didn’t your paymaster settle with you when he handed over your discharge?”

“Well, the first one couldn’t very handily, because he was captured, together with his money and accounts; and the second one couldn’t do it either, for he was captured too, and his money and books went to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, or into the hands of that pirate Semmes, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Why, Jack, what do you mean? You must have been in a fight.”

“That was what I thought when I found myself stranded on the deck of a strange ship without a bag or hammock to bless myself with, and no mess number,” said Jack, with a laugh. “My first vessel, the Harriet Lane, was captured at Galveston on New Year’s Day, and my second, the Hatteras, was sunk on the night of the 11th by the Alabama. Yes, I have been in two or three fights.”

“Of course we heard about the two you mention, but never once thought of your being there,” said Rodney. “Were you shot?”

“Oh, no. I was struck on the shoulder by something, don’t know what, when the gunboat Westfield was blown up by her crew to keep her from falling into the hands of the rebels. If I hadn’t been a good swimmer I should now be rusticating at Tyler, Texas, or some other Southern watering-place.”

“Well, now, take this big chair—you have grown to be a pretty good-sized fellow since I last saw you—and settle back at your ease and tell us all about it,” said Rodney. “What do you mean when you say you are figuring on making some money this trip? And if you are dead broke, where did you get that blue suit? They don’t issue that style of clothes to the foremast hands in the navy, do they? Or are you an officer?”

“One at a time,” replied Jack. “One at a time, and your questions will last a heap longer. I am a trader.”

“O Jack,” exclaimed Rodney, who was all excitement in a moment. “Then you are just the man we are looking for. Have you a permit?”

“Well, I—you see—that is to say, no; I haven’t.”

“Then you are not the man we want to see at all,” said Rodney in a disappointed tone. “You can’t trade without it.”

“I am painfully aware of the fact. And perhaps you wonder how I am going to buy cotton when I am dead broke, don’t you? I have influential friends; and thereby hangs a tale as long as a yardarm.”

“Suppose you leave off bothering your cousin now and go home with us,” suggested Mr. Gray, when he saw that Rodney was settling himself to listen to a lengthy story. “We haven’t seen you at the house very often of late, and you are almost as much of a stranger to your mother as you would be if you lived in Vicksburg. We haven’t heard all Jack’s war history yet, and perhaps he will give it to us to-night after supper.”

Rodney was glad to agree to the proposition, and at his request Ned Griffin was invited to make one of the party, for he was sure to be one of the most interested listeners. In fact the Grays had come to look upon Ned as one of the family. Jack’s story was not a long one, and you ought to hear it, in order to know how he happened to “turn up” there in Mooreville when, as Rodney said, no one dreamed of seeing him, and we will tell it in our own way, leaving out a good deal of what Jack called “sailor lingo.”

The last time we saw Jack Gray was so long ago that you have perhaps forgotten that we ever mentioned his name. Instead of following in the footsteps of his father and becoming a planter, Jack had sailed the blue water from his earliest boyhood, and was the elder brother of our Union hero, Marcy Gray, who was taken from his home at dead of night by a party of blue-jackets to serve as pilot on Captain Benton’s gunboat during the fight at Roanoke Island. Jack was Union all over, and, even when it was dangerous for him to do so, could hardly refrain from expressing his contempt for those who were trying to break up the government. When we first brought him to your notice he had already had some thrilling experience with the enemies of the flag under which he had sailed all over the world, his vessel, the brig Sabine, having been one of the first to fall into the power of the Confederate cruiser Sumter.

If you have read “Marcy, the Blockade-Runner,” you will remember that the Sabine was under the command of men who did not intend to remain prisoners a minute longer than they were obliged to; that the rebel banner had no sooner been hoisted at the peak in the place of their own flag, than they began laying plans to haul it down again, and that the captured brig was in the hands of the prize crew not more than twelve hours. Captain Semmes could not burn her as he would have been glad to do, for it so happened that she had a neutral cargo on board. The sugar and molasses with which her hold was filled were consigned to an English port in the island of Jamaica, and if he had destroyed it by applying the torch to the Sabine, the rebel commander would surely have brought his government into trouble with England. That was something he could not afford to do, so he determined to take his prize into the nearest Cuban port, in the hope that the Spanish authorities would permit him to land the cargo and sell the brig for the benefit of the Confederate government. There is every reason to believe that he would have been disappointed, for Spain was too friendly to the United States to give aid and comfort to her enemies; but before the matter could be put to the test the Sabine’s men, with Jack Gray at their head, quietly overpowered the rebel prize crew that had been put aboard of her and filled away for Key West, which was the nearest Federal naval station. When they arrived there they turned their five prisoners over to the commandant and set sail for Boston, taking with them the valuable cargo that ought to have gone to Jamaica. When off the coast of North Carolina they had a short but rather exciting race with Captain Beardsley’s privateer Osprey, on which Marcy Gray, Sailor Jack’s brother, was serving as pilot; but the Sabine was too swift to be overhauled, and her skipper too wide-awake to be deceived by the sight of the friendly flag which their pursuers gave to the breeze in the hope of alluring the defenceless merchantman to her destruction.

How the brig’s owners accounted for the cargo of molasses and sugar they so unexpectedly found on their hands Jack Gray neither knew nor cared, for his first and only thought was to reach home and see how his mother and Marcy were getting on. In this the master of the Sabine stood his friend by securing for him a berth as second officer on board the fleet schooner West Wind, which, while claiming to be an honest coaster, was really engaged in a contraband trade that would have made her a lawful prize to the first Federal blockader that happened to overhaul and search her. Jack knew all about it and understood the risk he was taking; but he accepted the position when it was offered, because he could not see that there was any other way for him to get home. Although the schooner’s cargo was consigned to a well-known American firm in Havana, the owners did not mean that it should go there at all. They intended that it should be run through the blockade and sold at Newbern. Captain Frazier explained all this to Jack, and though the latter did not believe in giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Old Flag, he not only accepted the position of second mate and pilot of the West Wind, but also invested two-thirds of his hard-earned wages in quinine, calomel, and other medicines of which the Confederacy stood much in need, and sold them in Newbern so as to clear about twelve hundred dollars. But it wasn’t money that Jack Gray cared for just then. He wanted to see his mother and Marcy.

The enterprise was successful. Captain Frazier ran down the coast without falling in with any of the blockaders, Sailor Jack took the schooner through Oregon Inlet without the least trouble, the Confederates were ready to pay gold for her cargo, and then Captain Frazier loaded with cotton for Bermuda, while his pilot, with one of the West Wind’s foremast hands for company, set out for home on foot. We have told how he came like a thief in the night and aroused his brother by tossing pebbles against his bedroom window, and what he did during the short time he remained under his mother’s roof. We have also described some of the exciting incidents that happened when Marcy took him out to the blockading fleet in the Fairy Belle—how they ran foul of Captain Beardsley’s schooner as they were passing through Crooked Inlet, and were afterward hailed by a steam launch, whose commanding officer would have given everything he possessed if he could have brought that same schooner within range of his howitzer for about two minutes—but they found one of the cruisers, the Harriet Lane, without much trouble and Sailor Jack remained aboard of her, while Marcy filled away for home. And we may add that the latter never heard from his brother again until he read in the papers that his vessel had been captured at Galveston.

Bright and early the next morning, after a short interview with Captain Wainwright, the commander of the Harriet Lane, Jack Gray was shipped with due formality and rated as “seaman” on the books of the paymaster, who ordered his steward to serve him two suits of clothes and the necessary small stores. Ten minutes afterward, having rigged himself out in blue and tossed his citizen’s suit through one of the ports into the sea, Jack was working with the crew as handily as though he had been attached to that particular vessel all his life. Of course he had never been drilled with small-arms or in handling big guns; but being quick to learn, his mates never had reason to call him a lubber, nor was he ever sent to the mast for awkwardness or neglect of duty.

The Harriet Lane had been built for the revenue service, and was considered to be the finest vessel in it. She was small, not more than five hundred tons burden, but she was swift; and if a suspicious craft appeared in the offing, the Lane, oftener than any other steamer, was sent out to see who she was and what business she had there. Consequently the life Jack led aboard of her was as full of excitement and active duty as he could have wished it to be. Much to Marcy’s regret she took no part in the fight at Roanoke Island. Not being intended for so heavy work, she remained outside to watch for blockade runners, and so Marcy never had a chance to see how his brother looked in a blue uniform.

Not long after that they were still farther separated. For weeks there had been rumors that the government intended to make an effort to recapture some of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico that had been seized by the Confederates; but whether New Orleans, Galveston, or Mobile was to be taken first, or whether the Lane was to have a hand in it, nobody knew. The last question was answered when all the vessels that could be spared from the Atlantic blockading fleet, Jack’s among the number, were ordered to report to Flag-officer Farragut at Ship Island in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way they picked up a large fleet of mortar schooners which had been ordered to rendezvous at Key West, and reached their destination six weeks in advance of the army of General Butler, which was to co-operate with them in the capture of New Orleans. But the time was not passed in idleness. They ran down to the mouths of the Mississippi, and worked a full month to get their vessels over the bar into the river. They found but fifteen feet of water there, while many of the fleet drew from three to seven feet more, so that, when they had been lightened almost to the bare hull, the tugs had to pull them through a foot or more of mud. It was tiresome and discouraging work, but the same patience, determination, and skill that carried Flag-officer Goldsborough safely through the gale at Hatteras enabled Farragut to overcome the obstructions at the mouths of the Mississippi, and on the 8th of April five powerful steam sloops, two large sailing vessels, seventeen gunboats, and twenty-one mortar schooners were fairly over the bar and ready for business. But three more weary weeks passed before active operations were begun, during which Farragut and Butler met at Ship Island and decided upon a plan of operations, and the river up to the forts was carefully surveyed, so that the Union commanders, by simply looking at the compasses in their binnacles, could tell how far off and in what direction each fort and battery lay, and how they ought to elevate and train their guns in order to reach them. Of course the rebels were not idle while these surveys were being made, and protested against them with every cannon they could bring to bear upon the boats and men engaged in the work; but “in spite of all dangers and difficulties the surveys were accomplished and maps prepared showing the bearing and distance from every point on the river to the flagstaffs in the forts.”

On the morning of the 17th the rebels began the fight in earnest by sending down a fire-raft that had been saturated with tar and turpentine; but a boat which put off from the Iroquois towed the raft ashore, where it burned itself out, doing no harm to anybody. Then the mortar schooners took a hand and pounded Fort Jackson with their thirteen-inch shells until they set it on fire and destroyed all the clothing and commissary stores it contained. Then the barrier which extended straight across the river from Fort Jackson, and was formed of dismantled vessels securely anchored and bound together with heavy chains, was cut, and Farragut was ready to perform the feat that made him famous the world over and placed him where he rightfully belonged—at the head of our navy. He ran by the forts with the loss of but a single vessel, the Varuna, which was the swiftest and weakest in the squadron. Having been built for a merchantman she was not intended for such work as Farragut put upon her, but she won the honors of the fight before she went down, having helped sink or disable six of the rebel fleet, any one of which was fairly her match.

The Lane took no part in this fight, but remained behind to guard Porter’s mortar schooners, which dropped down the river as soon as Farragut’s boats had passed the forts and closed with the Confederate fleet which came gallantly down the river to meet them.

“But our position was one of great danger, and we knew it,” said Sailor Jack at this point in his narrative. “There were at least fifteen vessels in the rebel fleet, two of which, the Louisiana and Manassas, the former mounting sixteen heavy guns, were the main reliance of the enemy, and supposed to be able to deal with us as the Merrimac dealt with the Cumberland in Hampton Roads. But we never saw the Louisiana until the thing was over, although we afterward learned that she had been assigned an important position in the fight. The other iron-clad was on hand, and began operations by shoving a fire-raft against the flagship, which ran aground in trying to escape from her. But instead of coming on down the river and destroying our mortar fleet, as she could have done very easily, for such wooden boats as the Lane could not have stood against her five minutes, she rounded to and went back after Farragut, who ordered the Mississippi to sink her. She didn’t succeed in doing that, but she riddled the Manassas with a couple of broadsides, set her on fire, and let her float down the river with the current. I tell you I was frightened when I saw that ugly-looking thing bearing down on us. We opened fire on her, and in a few minutes she blew up and went down out of sight.”

Shortly after this, Jack went on to relate, one of the most important and impressive incidents of the seven days’ fight took place on board the Harriet Lane. When Porter received a note from Flag-officer Farragut stating that he had passed the forts in safety, destroying the Confederate flotilla on the way, and was on the point of starting for New Orleans, and suggesting that possibly the forts might surrender if summoned to do so, Porter sent a boat ashore to see what the rebels thought about it; and the answer was that they didn’t acknowledge that they had been whipped yet. Although the forts had been battered out of shape by the shower of heavy shells that had been rained into them, the garrisons could still find shelter in the bomb-proofs, and if it was all the same to Porter they would hold out a while longer. But the men who had to fight the guns did not look at it that way. They were ready to give up, for they knew they would have to do it sooner or later; and when Porter began another bombardment, which he did without loss of time, the men began deserting by scores, and the next day the rebel commander hauled down his flag.

“These battles were all won by the navy,” said Jack proudly, “and everything on and along the river was destroyed by or surrendered to the navy, for the soldiers didn’t come up till the trouble was all over. We went up with our little fleet and anchored abreast of Fort Jackson. A boat was sent ashore, and when it came back it brought General Duncan and two or three other high-up rebel officers, who did not act at all like badly beaten men, and they were received aboard the Lane and taken into the cabin, where the terms of capitulation were to be drawn up and signed. They hadn’t been gone more than five minutes when some of the crew happened to look up the river, and there was that big iron-clad, the Louisiana, bearing down on us, a mass of flames. Then I was frightened again, I tell you. Mounting, as she did, sixteen heavy guns, she must have had all of twenty thousand pounds of powder in her magazine, and what would become of us if she blew up in the midst of our fleet? There wouldn’t be many of us left to tell the story. It was an act of treachery on the part of the rebel naval officers which Farragut was prompt to punish by sending them North as close prisoners, while the army officers were given their freedom under parole.”

“Did she do any damage when she blew up?” asked Rodney, who was deeply interested in the story.

“Not any to speak of,” replied Jack, “because the explosion took place before she got among us. Of course word was sent below as soon as we caught sight of her, and the order was promptly signalled to every vessel in sight to play out her cable to the bitter end, and stand by to sheer as wide as possible from the blazing iron-clad as she drifted down; but we had hardly set to work to obey the order when there was a wave in the air, which I felt as plainly as I ever felt a wave of water pass over my head; the Lane heeled over two streaks, everything loose on deck was jostled about, and then there was a rumbling sound, not half as loud as you would think it ought to be, and the danger was over. The Louisiana blew up before she got to us, and that was a lucky thing for the Harriet Lane.”

And Jack might have added that it was a lucky thing for the whole country, for the commander, Porter, who was in the Lane’s cabin with the rebel officers, was afterward the fighting Admiral Porter, who commanded the Mississippi squadron. His death at that crisis would have

been

been

a national loss.

CHAPTER VII.
SAILOR JACK IN ACTION.

The city of New Orleans surrendered to Flag-officer Farragut, who held it under his guns until General Butler came up with his soldiers to take it off his hands; and then he kept on up the river with a portion of his victorious fleet to effect a junction with the Mississippi squadron at Vicksburg, while the remainder of his vessels, one of which was the Harriet Lane, sailed away to hoist the flag of the Union over the port of Galveston, and break up the blockade running that was going on there. This force appeared before Galveston in May, but no earnest efforts were made to compel a surrender until October; and even then no serious attempt was made to take and hold the city. The commanding naval officer was content to establish a close blockade of the port, and nothing could have suited Jack Gray better. Galveston was a noted place for blockade runners, and it was seldom indeed that one escaped when the Lane sighted and started in pursuit of her. Every capture meant prize money.

“We made the most of the money that was made off that port last summer, but of course we didn’t get it all ourselves,” explained Jack. "If you are cruising by yourself and make a capture while another ship is within signalling distance of you, the law says you must divide with that ship, although she may not have done a thing to help you take the prize; but if you belong to a squadron, every vessel in it has a share in every prize you make. Fortunately for us there were but four ships in our squadron off Galveston, and every time we took a prize somebody would sing:

“‘Here’s enough for four of us;

Thank Heaven there’s no more of us—

God save the king.’”

Things went on in this satisfactory way until General Banks took command at New Orleans in December, and sent a regiment to assist the naval forces at Galveston, it being a part of his duty to “direct the military movements against the rebellion in the State of Texas.” Not more than a third of the regiment had arrived, the rest being on its way, when the rebel general Magruder, who had just been appointed to the chief command in Texas, formed a bold plan for the recapture of the city, and carried it out successfully on New Year’s morning. He had six thousand men and several cotton-clad vessels to help him, and of course the battle could end in but one way.

Galveston stands upon a long, narrow island in the bay, and is connected with the mainland by a bridge two miles in length, built upon piles. This bridge ought to have been destroyed, but it wasn’t, and when Magruder charged across it with his six regiments, he confidently expected to sweep away like so many cobwebs the little handful of Federals standing at the other end; but he didn’t. Aided by a hot fire from the Harriet Lane and Westfield, they repulsed every charge he made, and no doubt would have continued to do so if two of his best vessels, the Neptune and Bayou City, protected by cotton bales piled twenty feet high upon their low decks, so that at a distance they looked like common cotton transports, and manned by a regiment of sharpshooters, had not hastened to his aid.

“We had our own way with the troops on the bridge until those two boats came dashing down at us, and then things began to look squally,” said Jack. “We steamed up to meet them, but it wasn’t long before we wished we hadn’t done it. We didn’t disable them with our bow-guns as we hoped to do, and, indeed, it was as much as a man’s life was worth to handle the guns at all, for the sharpshooters behind the cotton bales sent their bullets over our deck like hailstones. One time I grabbed hold of a train tackle with four other men to help run out the No. 2 gun, and the next I knew I was standing there alone. The four had been shot dead, but I wasn’t touched. All this while the rebel boats were coming at us full speed, and the next thing I knew they struck us with terrible force, bow on, one on each side. But,” added Jack, with a chuckle of satisfaction, “one of them got hurt worse than we did. The Neptune was disabled by the shock, and grounded in shoal water; but the men on her were game to the last. They fought to win and shot to kill; for, no matter which way I looked, I saw somebody drop every minute.”

“And what became of the other boat?” inquired Rodney.

“The Bayou City? Oh, she drifted away, but rounded-to and came at us again, hitting us pretty near in the same place; but the second time she didn’t drift away. She made fast to and boarded us. When I saw those graybacks swarming over the hammock nettings, and heard that Captain Wainwright and most of the other officers had been killed, I knew I had to do something or go to prison; so I just took a header overboard through the nearest port and struck out for the Westfield, which was a mile or so astern, and trying to come to our aid.”

Jack was not quite correct when he said he “struck out,” after taking a header through the port. He turned on his back and floated, for he was afraid that if he showed any signs of life he would be discovered and picked off by some sharpshooter. He permitted the current to whirl him around now and then, so that he could keep his bearings and hold a straight course for the Westfield, but before he had floated half a mile, he discovered that he was making straight for as hot a place as that from which he had just escaped. The flagship Westfield had run hard and fast aground within easy range of a battery which the rebels had planted on the shore, and although two other gunboats came up and tried to drag her into deep water, she was being literally cut to pieces before Jack Gray’s eyes; and more than that, her commander was making preparations to abandon her to her fate.

“Then I began to look wild again, and took a sheer off to give the flagship plenty of room to blow up in,” said Jack. “Captain Renshaw, her commandant, was a regular, and I knew well enough that he would not leave his vessel in such shape that the rebels could fix her up and use her against us, though I was not prepared for what happened a few minutes later. While I was moving along with the current, not daring to swim lest I should attract the notice of some wide-awake sharpshooter, I saw Renshaw send off his men by the boat-load until at last there were but two boats left alongside the Westfield. One of these put off loaded to the water’s edge, but the other remained, and I knew it was waiting for Renshaw to fire the train he had laid to the magazine; and that made me sheer off a little farther, although I began swimming the best I knew how in the hope that one of the boats would wait for me to catch on behind. In a minute or two more Captain Renshaw came out, and that was the first and last I ever saw of him. He stepped into his boat, but before it had moved twenty feet away the flagship blew up, smashing the two small boats into kindling-wood and sending every man in them to kingdom come.”

No one else who was as close to the Westfield as Jack Gray was at that moment escaped with his life, and he did not come off unscathed. While he was gazing around him in a dazed sort of way, gasping for breath and utterly unable to realize what had happened, a piece of the Westfield’s wreck which had been blown high in air descended with frightful velocity, and barely missing his head struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder and shot down into the water out of sight. And it was but one of a score of such dangerous missiles which rained upon him during the next few seconds. They plunged into the water perilously near to him and splashed it in his face from all directions. The most of them were no bigger than the head they threatened to break, while others were as large as a barn door. At first Jack thought the safest place would be nearer the bottom of the river; but when he saw how some of the heaviest pieces of the wreck dove out of sight when they struck the water, he decided that he could not go deep enough to escape them, and that the best plan would be to look upward and try to dodge them when he saw that they were coming too close; but by the time he came to this conclusion and turned upon his back, the storm was over and the air above him was clear. It was the narrowest escape he had ever had, and Jack Gray had been in some tight places.

Having satisfied himself that he was no longer in danger of being knocked senseless by falling wreckage, Jack turned upon his face and struck out for the nearest gunboat, or rather tried to; for his right arm was almost useless. He could thrust it through the water in front of him, but when he endeavored to swim with it, it dropped to his side like a piece of lead.

“And that’s the way it felt for three or four days, although I was under good care all the time,” continued Jack. “I was picked up after I had floated and swum with one hand a distance of three miles, reported the loss of my vessel, and told what little I knew about the blowing up of the Westfield, and then I was glad to go into the hands of the doctor, for I found that I was worse hurt than I thought I was. But you may be sure I didn’t say so. If there is anything that is despised aboard ship it is a sojer, which is the name we give to men who can work and won’t, and so I kept on doing duty when I ought by rights to have been in my hammock. I pulled twenty miles on the night of the 11th of January to escape capture, and of course the exertion gave me a big set-back; but I haven’t got to that part of my story yet.”

Jack Gray watched and waited anxiously to hear from some of his shipmates, but not a word did he get from anybody; and this led him to believe that he was the only one of the Harriet Lane’s crew who escaped death or capture. The direct results of the fight were that the rebels, with very small loss to themselves, captured the Lane, caused the destruction of the flagship of the squadron, secured possession of two coal barges that were lying at the wharf and nearly four hundred prisoners; but “the indirect results were still more important.” The whole State of Texas came back under their flag, and blockade running went on as though it had never been interfered with at all. It was done principally by small schooners like Captain Beardsley’s Hattie, which took out cotton and brought back medicines, guns, ammunition, and cloth that was afterward made into uniforms for the Confederate soldiers. And the worst of it was that it was kept up to the end of the war. Of course word was sent to New Orleans at once, and Commodore Bell came down with a small fleet to shut up the port; but he brought no soldiers with him to hold the city, for General Banks couldn’t spare a single regiment. He had made up his mind to capture Port Hudson, and needed all the men he could get.

Among the vessels that came down with Commodore Bell was the Hatteras, the slowest old tub in the fleet, and much to his disgust Jack Gray was ordered aboard of her. The badge he wore on his arm showed that he had been a quartermaster on board the Lane, but he was transferred without any rating at all, it being optional with Captain Blake, the commander of the Hatteras, whether he would continue him as a quartermaster or put him before the mast. Jack had already served four months beyond the year for which he enlisted, but he made no complaint, although he had firmly resisted all efforts on the part of the Lane’s officers to induce him to re-enlist for three years or during the war.

“I might have had a commission as well as not,” said Jack, “for there wasn’t a watch officer aboard the Lane who could have passed a better examination than I could. Indeed, I hadn’t been aboard of her twenty-four hours before I found that I knew more about a ship than most of the men who commanded me. But as often as I thought of staying in the service, something told me I had better get out; and that was the reason why I refused to re-enlist or accept a commission.”

The fact was that, so long as the speedy Lane was capturing a valuable blockade runner or two every week, and money was coming into his pockets faster than he could have earned it in any other business, Jack Gray was quite willing to remain a quartermaster, and so he said nothing to Captain Wainwright concerning the honorable discharge that rightfully belonged to him; but now the case was different, and Jack wanted to go home and see how his mother and Marcy were getting on. He had been ordered aboard a vessel that couldn’t catch a mud-turtle in a stern chase, and consequently there was no more excitement or prize money for him. The paymaster who ought to have paid him off and given him his discharge had been captured with all his money and books, and Jack knew that his accounts would have to be settled in Washington; and there was so much red tape in Washington that there was no telling whether or not they would ever be settled. After thinking the matter over, Jack wrote a letter to Commodore Bell, telling him how the matter stood and asking for his discharge, and gave it into the hands of the captain of the Hatteras to be forwarded. The first result was about what he thought it would be. He had to pull off his petty officer’s badge and go before the mast. He was also assigned to an oar in the first cutter, and that was one of the best things that ever happened to Jack Gray.

Nowhere else in the world is life such a burden as aboard a vessel lying on a station with nothing but routine work to do. Jack found it so and chafed and fretted under it, but not for long. One day, about an hour after the dinner pennant had been hauled down, the lounging, lazy crew of the Hatteras were startled by the cry of “Sail ho!” from the lookout. Signal was at once made to the Brooklyn, Commodore Bell’s flagship, and the answer that came back was an order for the Hatteras to run out and see who and what the visitor was. Of course the crew were glad to be afloat once more, and some of them began talking about prize money; but others declared that if the stranger had any speed at all and desired to keep out of the way, the Hatteras would never get nearer to her than she was at that moment. But the sequel proved that the stranger did not want to keep out of the way, although at first she acted like it. She rounded to and turned her head out to sea as if she were fleeing from pursuit; but all the while the war ship came nearer and nearer to her, until the officer at the masthead made out that the chase was a large steamer under sail. This fact was duly communicated to the flagship by signal, and then the old Hatteras seemed to wake up and try to show a little speed; but Captain Blake became suspicious and ordered his ship cleared for action, with everything in readiness for a determined attack or a vigorous defense.

The pursuit continued for twenty miles, and finally night set in with no moon but plenty of starlight. Jack Gray, who had stood at one of the broadside guns until he was tired, had just given utterance to the hope that the chase would improve the opportunity to run out of sight or else come about and give them battle, just as she pleased, when an officer at the masthead sent down the startling information that the stranger had rounded-to and was coming back. Beyond a doubt that meant that something was going to happen. She hove in sight almost immediately, and in less time than it takes to tell it stopped her engines within a hundred yards, the captain of the blockader ringing his stopping bell at the same instant.

“What ship is that?” shouted the Union commander, from his place on the bridge.

“Her Britannic Majesty’s steamer Vixen!” was the reply. “What ship is that?”

“This is the United States ship Hatteras,” answered Captain Blake. “I will send a boat aboard of you.”

“When we heard this conversation,” said Jack, “we made up our minds that we had been chasing an English ship. Mind you, I don’t say a friendly ship, for England never was and never will be friendly to the United States. She would be glad to see us broken up to-morrow, and is doing all she dares to help the rebels along. Of course it was our captain’s duty to find out whether or not the other captain had told him the truth, and the only way he could do it was by sending an officer off to examine his papers. He had the first cutter called away, and, as that was the boat to which I belonged, I lost no time in

taking off

taking off

my side-arms and tumbling into her. And that was all that saved me from falling into Semmes’ power a second time.”

Jack then went on to say that, as soon as the officer had taken his place in the stern-sheets, the cutter was shoved off from the Hatteras and pulled around her stern; but just as she began swinging around with her bow toward the supposed English ship a most exciting and unexpected thing happened. A voice came from the latter’s deck, so clear and strong that the cutter’s crew could hear every word:

“This is the Confederate steamer Alabama!” And before the astonished blue-jackets had time to realize that they had been trapped the roar of a broadside rent the air, and shells and solid shot went crashing into the wooden walls of the doomed Hatteras. Semmes afterward took great credit to himself because he did not strike the Federal ship in disguise, but gave her “fair warning.” How long was it after he gave warning that he fired his broadside into her? Not two seconds. He took all the advantage he could, and yet there was no one who protested louder or had more to say about trickery and cowardice when the Federal officers took advantage of him. He made a great fuss because Captain Winslow protected the machinery and boilers of the Kearsarge with chains, as Admiral Farragut protected his vessels when he ran past the forts at New Orleans.

The roar of the Confederate steamer’s guns had scarcely ceased before an answering broadside came from the Union war ship. Without the loss of a moment both vessels were put under steam and the action became a running fight, the blue-jackets standing bravely to their guns and giving their powerful antagonist as good as she sent. The cutter’s crew tried in vain to return to their vessel. They rowed hard, but every turn of her huge paddle-wheels left them farther behind, and finally they gave up in despair and laid on their oars and watched the conflict. It was desperate but short. In just thirteen minutes from the time it began the Hatteras hoisted a white light at her masthead and fired an off-gun to show that she had been beaten.

“Fortune of war,” sighed the officer who was sitting in the cutter’s stern-sheets beside the coxswain. “But I tell you, men, I hate to see our old ship surrendered to that pirate. Back, port; give way, starboard! We haven’t surrendered, and we want to get away from here before they catch sight of us.”

No cutter’s crew ever pulled harder than Jack Gray and his shipmates pulled in obedience to this order. Jack forgot that he had a crippled arm, and when the cutter came about and pointed her head toward the shore more than twenty miles away, he rowed as strong an oar as he ever did in his life. He listened anxiously for the hail that would tell him the cutter had been discovered, but heard none; but he saw and reported something that sent an exultant thrill through the heart of every one of his companions.

“Mr. Porter,” said he, in tones which intense excitement rendered husky. “Our old tub has been surrendered, but she’ll never do the rebels any good. She’s sinking, sir.”

“Thank Heaven!” murmured the officer, whirling around as if he had been shot.

He couldn’t see anything through the darkness except the white light that the blockader had hoisted at her masthead in token of surrender, and which was swaying about in a way that would have been unaccountable to a landsman; but the blue-jackets knew she was going to the bottom. She went rapidly, too, for Captain Blake afterward reported that in two minutes from the time he left her the Hatteras disappeared, bow first. Then Jack thought that Mr. Porter would order the cutter back to assist in picking up the crew, but he didn’t do it. They would have reached the sinking vessel too late to be of any service, and besides Mr. Porter thought it his duty to report to the Flag-officer at once, believing that if the Brooklyn were promptly warned she could capture or sink the Alabama before she had time to get very far away. But the fleet had already been warned by the sound of the guns that the Hatteras had encountered an armed enemy of some description, and several steamers were hastening to the rescue; scattering widely in the pursuit, to cover as much space as possible and increase their chances of falling in with the enemy. The cutter passed these vessels at so great a distance that she could not attract the attention of any of them, and it was not until they had pulled all the way to Galveston, and boarded one of the blockading fleet which remained behind, that the particulars of the fight became known. None of the pursuing steamers ever saw the Alabama, which sailed away for the coast of Yucatan; but as one of them was returning to her anchorage the next morning, baffled and beaten in the chase, she fell in with the sunken Hatteras, whose royal masts were just above water. The night pennant floating from one of them told the melancholy story; but if Jack Gray and his shipmates had not escaped just as they did, it might have been a long time before Commodore Bell would have known that the dreaded Alabama had been in his immediate vicinity. But her day was coming. The first time she met a Union war ship that was anywhere near her match she was sent to the bottom.

Once more Jack was without a vessel, and had no clothes “to bless himself with” except those he stood in; but that didn’t trouble him half as much as did the discharge he was anxious to get. He and the rest of the cutter’s men were sent aboard the flagship when she returned to her anchorage, and that suited him, for it gave him a fair chance to gain the commodore’s ear—a task he set himself to accomplish as soon as the excitement had somewhat died away. But the Flag-officer was a regular, and like all regulars he moved in ruts of opinion so deep that a yoke of oxen could not have pulled him out. He couldn’t give Jack a discharge, he said, because he didn’t know when or where he enlisted, for how long, or anything about it. He couldn’t give him any money, either, for his name was not borne on the paymaster’s books. He could give him a paper stating that he had done service in the Union navy and let him go home, and that was all he could do for him.

“And that’s the kind of a discharge I got,” said Jack with a laugh. “But it proved to be good enough and strong enough to take me through the provost guards in New Orleans and get me a pass to come up here. I have not drawn a cent from Uncle Sam, so he owes me a year’s wages and better, as well as a lot of prize money. The commodore dispatched a vessel to New Orleans with his report of the loss of the Hatteras, and I was permitted to take passage on her.”

“How did you feel when you found yourself in a strange city with no money in your pocket and no friends to go to?” inquired Ned Griffin.

“I didn’t think much about it, because I never let a little thing like that worry me,” said Jack with another laugh. “I did not by any means intend to go hungry, or sleep on the Levee, if my pockets were empty. There were several of our vessels in the river, and I knew I could ship whenever I felt like it; but I had made up my mind that I would not go afloat again until I had said ‘hello!’ to my relatives up here in Mooreville.”

The first boat that left the dispatch steamer took Jack ashore and landed him on the Levee among some river craft that belonged to the quartermaster’s department of Banks’ army. Being a deep-water man he did not bestow more than a passing glance upon them, but turned his face toward the docks above at which a large fleet of sea-going vessels was moored; and as he walked he kept a bright lookout for two things—a sailorman who could tell him what had happened in the world since he left it (being on the blockade Jack thought was almost as bad as being out of the world), and a soldier who could direct him to the office of the provost marshal. As he stepped from the Levee to the nearest dock his gaze became riveted upon a rakish looking fore-and-aft schooner that lay there discharging a miscellaneous cargo. She looked familiar to him. She was painted white with a green stripe at her water-line, and bore the name “Hyperion, Portland,” on her stern; but Jack Gray was positive that he had known and sailed on her when she was painted black with a red stripe at the water-line, and went by a very different name. He dodged up the after gang-plank to the deck and took another look. He had had charge of that deck more than once. Everything on and about it was familiar to him, not excepting the face of the lank Yankee skipper, whose head and shoulders at that moment emerged from the companion-way. Jack turned about and approached him with a comical smile on his countenance.

“Want a pilot this trip, Captain Frazier?” said he.

“No, I don’t,” was the surly reply. He looked searchingly into Jack’s face, but could not remember that he had ever seen him before.

“No offence, I hope,” continued the latter. “But I served you so well before that I think you might give me a lift when you see me stranded here without a shot in the locker. I took the West Wind through Oregon Inlet when——”

“Mr. Gray—Jack!” said the captain, in an excited whisper. “Sh! Not another word out of you; not a whimper. Come below with me.”

Shaking all over with suppressed merriment Jack Gray followed the skipper down the stairs and into the cabin, the door of which was quickly but softly closed and locked.

“Sit down,” continued the captain. “And if you care a cent for me don’t speak above your breath. Where have you been? That uniform says you belong to the navy.”

“I did, but I don’t belong now,” replied Jack. “Shortly after I made that trip with you I shipped for a year, but have been kept over my time. I have been on the blockade, and have helped capture many a fine craft like this one.”

“Sh! Don’t speak so loud,” whispered Captain Frazier, for it was he. “But you couldn’t do harm to this craft now, for she is engaged in honest business.”

“No private ventures stowed away among her cargo?” said Jack.

“Nary venture. There’s no need of it, for I make money hand over fist in an honest way. I am a cotton trader. Got a permit and everything all square. And cotton will be worth a dollar a pound by the time I get back to New York.”

“What do you pay for it here?”

“That depends on the man I am dealing with. If he is a Union man I give him from seven to ten cents in greenbacks, which will buy eighty per cent. more stuff than Confederate scrip. If he is a good rebel, or if he is surrounded by rebel neighbors who are keeping an eye on his movements, I give him ten cents in rebel money.”

“Where do you get rebel money?” asked Jack.

“Anywhere—everywhere. I can get all I want for thirty cents on a dollar, and have bought some as low as twenty. It will be lower than that in less than a month. But, mind you, no one around here knows that I have been a blockade runner. And I am not at the head of this business. My Boston owners are doing it all and I am simply their agent. But are you really aground?”

“I never told a straighter story in my life,” answered Jack, who went on to describe how he happened to be in that condition. When his hasty narrative was finished Captain Frazier said:

“There’s always room aboard my schooner for such a sailorman as I know you to be, and if you want to sign with me as my chief officer I shall be glad to have you. And you must let me advance you money enough to provide for your immediate wants.”

When Jack reached this part of his story Rodney knew where that blue suit came from.