Although Marcy had never felt greater contempt for a man in his life, he managed to get through the interview to his satisfaction; but whether or not Mr. Beardsley was satisfied, the boy could not tell. Sometimes he acted as if he was, and then again he looked and talked as if he suspected that Marcy was not half as enthusiastic as he pretended to be, and that his heart was set on something besides privateering.
"I'd like to capture this vessel, hoist Dick Graham's flag over it, and give her up to some man-of-war," he said to himself. "But if I should try it, I'd never dare show myself around home again. The game isn't worth the candle. Some of Uncle Sam's boys will knock her into kindling-wood if she stays outside long enough, and possibly they may send me to Davy's locker along with her. It's rather a desperate chance, but it's the only thing that will save mother from persecution. Perhaps the neighbors will be a little more civil to her when they find that I am in the service of the Confederacy." Then aloud he said: "When she gets her guns and stores aboard she will draw a good deal of water for Crooked Inlet, and I'd feel safer if I could have Julius at my elbow when—"
"Oh, that wouldn't do at all," interrupted Mr. Beardsley, stamping about the deck and shaking his head most emphatically. "Julius is a nigger and an abolitionist, and we don't want no such around. I've had carpenters at work on the schooner for almost two weeks, and there aint been one of my black people aboard of her."
"But they must all know that you have been doing something to her," replied Marcy.
"Of course. I told 'em that I was getting ready to go a-trading between Plymouth, Edenton, and Newbern, and that I was fixing on her up so't I could carry big cargoes."
"Mebbe they believed it and mebbe they didn't," was the boy's mental comment. "If the darkies hereabouts are as sharp as they are down Barrington way, they understand what this vessel is intended for as well as you do yourself."
"I won't have no niggers aboard my privateer," continued Mr. Beardsley, who talked and acted as if he had grown in importance since those gun-decks were put into the schooner. "I wouldn't trust the best of 'em in times like these, and so I shall man my ship with whites. These men belong to my crew, and the rest will be just as good."
Marcy thought they might be better without hurting anything, for he did not at all like the appearance of the two fellows he had found in charge of the privateer. They had probably been picked up among the sailor boardinghouses in Newbern; and if the test of the crew were going to be like them, Marcy thought he would not care to be in their company for a great while at a time. He afterward learned that one of the men was deep in Mr. Beardsley's confidence.
Before the boy took leave of the owner of the privateer they came to a plain understanding on all points, agreed upon terms, and Marcy was to hold himself in readiness to sail for Newbern at any hour of the day or night. He felt almost like a criminal when he rode home to meet his mother, but, although he was among the first, he was by no means the last, to serve the cause of the Confederacy because he could not help himself.