"Not for a long time, for no store-ship or other vessel has come to our squadron for several months, though we are waiting for a vessel at the present time. You look very pale and thin, Uncle Homer."
"Perhaps I look worse than I feel," replied the planter with a faint smile. "But I have suffered a great deal of anxiety lately."
"Excuse me, Colonel Passford, but if you will allow me to install you in your stateroom, you will have abundance of time to talk with your nephew afterwards," interposed Captain Breaker, who was very busy.
"Certainly, Captain; pardon me for detaining you. I am a prisoner, and I shall need my trunk, which is in my stateroom on board of the Tallahatchie. Gill will bring it on board if you send word to him to do so," replied the colonel.
He followed the captain to his cabin. The door of the Confederate commander's room was open, and the planter exchanged a few words with him. He was shown to the other stateroom, and Punch was ordered to do all that he could for the comfort of the passenger. Captain Breaker spoke a few pleasant words with the wounded commander, and then hastened on deck.
Mr. Ballard, the second lieutenant, had again been duly installed as temporary executive officer; Mr. Walbrook had been moved up, and Mr. Bostwick, master, had become third lieutenant. As usual, the engineers were Englishmen, who had come over in the Trafalgar, as well as the greater part of the crew, though the other officers were Southern gentlemen who had "retired" from the United States Navy. The foreigners were willing to remain in the engine room, and promised to do their duty faithfully as long as their wages were paid; but Leon Bolter, the first assistant engineer of the Bellevite, was sent on board of the prize to insure their fidelity.
Ensigns Palmer Drake and Richard Leyton, who were serving on board of the steamer while waiting for positions, were sent to the Tallahatchie, the first named as prizemaster, and the other as his first officer, with a prize crew of twenty men, and the two steamers got under way.
[CHAPTER XX]
A VERY MELANCHOLY CONFEDERATE
Notwithstanding his military title, Colonel Homer Passford was not a soldier, though he had once been a sort of honorary head of a regiment of militia. His brother, Captain Horatio Passford, Christy's father, was a millionaire in the tenth degree. More than twenty years before the war he had assisted Homer to all the money he required to buy a plantation in Alabama, near Mobile, where he had prospered exceedingly, though his possessions had never been a tenth part of those of his wealthy brother.