He had never before felt so gloomy and downhearted as he did at that moment, and he didn't care to talk. Calling Julius aft to strike a light for him, he went into the cabin and tried to read, leaving the man-of-war's man to sail the schooner, which he was able to do without help from anybody. In the bundle of papers that the messenger boy gave him, Marcy was glad to find three that were published in Newbern. These he kept out to be read at once, intending when he passed Plymouth to throw them ashore for the soldiers; but the Northern papers he stowed away in one of the lockers beside the flags. He wanted time to read them carefully, for he believed they would tell him the truth; and that was something he had not heard for many a day. It seemed to him that he had not been below more than half an hour when he heard a hail, to which the hoarse voice of the man at the wheel responded. A moment later it added:
"On deck, if you please, sir. I've got to leave you now. My launch is close aboard."
She was almost alongside by the time Marcy reached the deck, and five minutes later the officer in command of her again came over the rail; but this time he came alone. There were no blue-jackets with drawn cutlasses at his heels.
"I guess you've had luck," were the first words he said. "I don't see the other fellow anywhere."
"No, sir. We left him aboard your vessel," replied Marcy. "He will be examined and sworn in in the morning. By the way, what did the officer of the deck mean when he said that the paymaster was asleep as well as the doctor? What has the paymaster to do with swearing him in?"
"He or his clerk has to take the descriptive lists, you know, sir," replied the sailor. "Then he gets an order from the captain to give the men their clothes and small stores—tobacco, soap, sewing silk, and the like, you know, sir. I was told to come back and report to you, Mr. Colson."
"Very good. Get aboard the launch. Can you and the moke get along by yourselves?" he continued, turning to Marcy. "I see you have but one hand."
"Oh, yes, sir; we'll get along all right," answered Marcy, who was very much afraid that the officer would ask him how he had got hurt. "Seen anything of that blockade-runner since we left?"
"I haven't seen a thing except this schooner to-night," was the reply; and Marcy judged from the tone in which the words were uttered that the officer was much disgusted at being obliged to stay out there all night in an open boat for nothing. No doubt he would have been still more disgusted to learn that if he had been two miles farther up the coast he would have had a chance of capturing the "audacious" little vessel that he was looking for.
The officer wasted no words in leave-taking, but went at once, and Marcy Gray felt more gloomy than ever when he found himself alone on the ocean with nobody but the boy Julius for a companion. He sent the latter to the wheel and went forward to act as lookout and pilot, intending to follow Captain Beardsley's example and run through Crooked Inlet under full sail. He thought he could remember about where the buoys had been placed, and besides he had the flood tide to help him. If he succeeded, he would run across the Sound and hunt up some little bay in which he could go into hiding until such time as he thought it safe to come out and start for home.