"I assure you I have not forgotten her, and so I do not urge you to remain," replied the captain. "Now, how can you get home in the easiest way?"
"By boat, if I had one."
"You can have three or four if you want that many. You know that we have captured every sort of craft we could find along the shore, and you can take your pick of any of those on deck. I don't know that this will be of any use to you," said the captain, shaking the sheet of paper he held in his hand, "but I think it would be a good plan for you to take it along, for there is no telling what may happen. You don't think there is anything on it, do you? Well, there is, and it is the strongest letter of recommendation I know how to write. We are going to leave garrisons scattered all through this region, and if at any time you find yourself in trouble with them, tell the first officer you can find to hold this paper before a hot fire and read the words the heat will bring out. The letter is written with sympathetic ink, and you don't want to use it until you have to, because, after the characters have once been brought out, there is no way that I know of to make them invisible again. I am deeply indebted to you, and wish there was some way in which I could serve you."
It made Marcy sad to have the captain talk to him in this way. Although he was impatient to get home, he did not like to take leave of the new friends he had made on board that ship, for the probabilities were that he would never see them again. After thinking a moment he replied that he did not know of anyway in which the captain could favor him, unless it was by taking a brotherly interest in Aleck Webster and his friends, who had come off to his ship for the purpose of enlisting.
"They are on deck now," said Marcy, in conclusion, "and I was sorry to see them come aboard. Of course they have a right to do as they please, but I had somehow got it into my head that they would stay on shore to protect those of us who are unable to protect ourselves. But Aleck thinks we do not need any one to protect us now that all these captured points are to be held by the Union forces."
"And that is what I think," replied the captain. "The commanding officer at Plymouth will not stand by and let your rebel neighbors impose on you. If they don't behave themselves, report them; that's all you've got to do."
"But you don't know how sly they are, and how hard it is to prove anything against them. The commodore as good as said that Captain Beardsley would be released."
"Of course; and Burnside probably released him at the time he paroled the prisoners we captured on the Island. When you get home you will probably find him there, but I don't think you have anything to fear from him. There's your letter, and here are a few copies of a joint proclamation by Burnside and Goldsborough, which I am instructed to scatter wherever I go," said the captain, placing a good-sized package in Marcy's hand and rising from his seat as he spoke. "Take them along, and put them where you think they will do the most good. I suppose the folks ashore think we are outlaws of the worst description."
Marcy replied that that was about the idea the people in his settlement had of Yankees, and added that he did not believe that a single article of value could be found in a plantation house within a circle of ten miles of Plymouth, everything that was worth stealing having been carried away and concealed in the swamps.
"Well, when you meet people of that sort, call their attention to the last paragraph of that proclamation," said the captain. "Now, we shall have to say good-by, for I expect to drop down the river in a few minutes."