True To His Colors

by Harry Castlemon

"All right. Osprey she is," answered the captain, as he hauled up the flag which had been made into a little bundle. "You stand by to set 'em going."

The crew, as well as the rapidly increasing crowd on the wharf, who watched the little bundle as it traveled toward the head of the mast, did not wait for the agent to "set them going"! When it reached the top, and a slight jerk from one of the halliards loosened the flag to the breeze, they yelled vociferously, and patted one another on the back and shook hands as though they considered it a very auspicious occasion.

"Now, give three cheers for Captain Beardsley and his privateer Osprey, who have so promptly responded to our President's call. May they strike such terror to the hearts of the Yankee nation that they won't have a ship on the sea in six months from this day."

Of course such talk as this just suited the crowd on the wharf, who yelled longer and louder than before. Of course, too, Marcy had to join them in order to keep up appearances, but he almost despised himself for it, and made the mental prediction that in a good deal less than six months' time the people of Newbern would cease to remember that such a schooner as the Osprey ever existed, although her arrival was loudly heralded in all the city papers. Her "saucy air" and the "duck-like manner in which she rode the waters," were especially spoken of, and one reporter, whose penetration was both surprising and remarkable, discovered in Captain Beardsley a man who would "do and dare anything for the success of the glorious cause he had been so prompt to espouse."

The rest of that day and all the succeeding one were consumed in getting the provisions, ammunition, and arms aboard, mounting the howitzers, and stationing the crew. When the work was ended late at night, Marcy tumbled into his bunk between decks, heartily disgusted with the life he was leading. The schooner was to run out with the last of the ebb tide in the morning, so as to catch the flood tide, which would help her up to Crooked Inlet.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONCLUSION.

It took them the best part of the next day to run to their destination, and the whole of the following one to find and buoy the channel, which changed more or less with every storm that swept the coast. Marcy thought it a foolhardy piece of business to depend upon that treacherous inlet for a way of escape in case the schooner was discovered and pursued by a ship of war, and told Captain Beardsley so; but the latter simply smiled, referred Marcy to the work he had done that day, and reminded him that there were eight feet of water in the deepest part of the channel, and that the privateer, fully loaded, drew but little more than six.

"There aint a sea-going vessel in the Yankee navy that can run on six foot of water, and I know it," chuckled Beardsley. "If one of 'em gets after us we'll skim through easy as falling off a log, but she'll stick, 'specially if she runs 'cording to them buoys you set out." This was the "work" to which the captain referred. At that time the rule was for all ship-masters to leave black buoys to starboard and the red ones to port; or, to put it in English, they were to pass to the left of the black buoys, and to the right of red ones, or run the risk of getting aground and losing their insurance, in case their ships went to pieces. But Marcy, acting under the orders of Captain Beardsley (who, now that he was fairly afloat, began to show that he was much more of a sailor than the folks around home thought he was), had changed this order of things by anchoring the red buoys on the right of the channel going out, and the black ones on the left. Of course it was necessary for the pilot to bear this in mind if he were called upon to take the privateer through there in a hurry, or on a dark night when the wind was blowing strongly. To a landsman this may seem like a very small thing, but it was enough to insure the destruction of any vessel whose commander was so daring as to try to follow in Captain Beardsley's lead. More than that, Crooked Inlet was not marked upon any government chart. The Atlantic Ocean had opened it since the last survey was made.

All things being in readiness for the cruise, the Osprey ran through the inlet on the morning of the third day out from Newbern, and spread her wings to swoop down upon the first unsuspecting merchantman which happened to be holding along the coast inside of Diamond Shoals. Now the crosstrees were manned for the first time, a small pull taken at the sheets fore and aft, and with a fine breeze over her quarter the schooner ran off to the southeast toward the fair-weather highway leading from the West Indies to Northern ports. Then the young pilot, who had given up his place at the wheel, had leisure to look about him and make a mental estimate of the crew. If there was a native American among them he could not find him. He guessed right when he told himself that they must have belonged to foreign vessels in port when President Lincoln's proclamation was issued, and that Beardsley's agent had induced them to join the Confederacy by offering higher wages than they were receiving, and making extravagant promises of a wild, free, easy life aboard the privateer, and unlimited dollars to spend in the way of prize money. But as far as Marcy could see they were good sailors, and Captain Beardsley and his mates enforced discipline from the first.