“That was good of you,” the leader remarked. “Wheat-bread, beef, and coffee are rather scarce in our town just now. We’ve been living on corn-meal and mule-steak.
“Now, Stenson,” he continued, “you take this bunch down to the guard-house and they can tell their story to the provost marshal in the morning. I reckon they don’t care to be shot before daylight.”
“Mr. Barker,” Tim asked, after they had been locked in a small room, “do you think they will shoot us?”
“Don’t worry, boys,” Barker said kindly. “We haven’t done anything they can shoot us for. Just lie down and go to sleep. Thank God, we’re in Vicksburg at last.”
The examination next morning was not very formidable. It was easy for Barker to prove that he and his company were not Northern spies; moreover the meeting of the boys with their parents convinced the military authorities that Barker had told them the exact truth.
“But how did you get past the Union gunboats?” one of the officers inquired. “Did you get a pass?”
“If you please, gentlemen,” the old trapper replied with a shrewd smile, “you see we got by and I reckon as long as we don’t want to pass them again, it really makes no difference how we did it.”
The officer was satisfied, but one of his colleagues took up the inquiry.
“My friend,” he said, with a suppressed smile, “you have shown some ability as a blockade-runner, but your naval architecture is peculiar. Why did you nail that sheet iron to the inside of your ship? Don’t you know that it is customary to put the iron on the outside?”
At this question everybody laughed good-naturedly and with a broad grin, the old man replied: