“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?”