Blockade-running soon became almost as much an art as a trade, and there were some grumblers in this country who made it a ground of complaint that no English officers had been sent to observe the new development in this branch of naval warfare. The most ingenious expedients were resorted to on both sides. A system of signalling by means of blue lights and rockets was in many cases established between the forts and their friends in the offing. The steamer Hansa ran into Wilmington while Fort Fisher was being bombarded, and prevented pursuit by boldly sailing close past the powder-ship, which shortly afterwards blew up. Occasionally, a furious cannonade was begun from some adjacent fort, so as to draw off the blockading squadron, and leave the entrance free, if only for a few hours. The blockaders had their tricks too. Sometimes heavy smoke was seen rising as from a ship on fire; but when the blockade-runner steered to render help, she found out too late that the supposed burning vessel was a Federal cruiser, which had resorted to this device in order to bring the swifter craft within range of her guns. One dark rainy night the Petrel ran out of Charleston, and shortly afterwards fell in with what appeared to be a large merchant vessel. Hoping to crown a successful run with the capture of a valuable prize, she gave chase, and fired a shot to bring the stranger to. The reply was a single broadside, so well directed that there was no need for another. The supposed merchantman was the frigate St Lawrence. A favourite ruse of the privateer Jeff Davis was to hoist the French flag of distress, and when a ship bore down in response to this appeal, she would, under pretence of handing in a letter, send aboard a boat’s crew armed to the teeth.
But of all the remarkable incidents of this remarkable blockade there was none more noteworthy than the voyage of the British ship Emily St Pierre. The story rivals the inventions of a sea-romancer. This vessel left Calcutta with orders to make the coast of South Carolina and see if the blockade of Charleston was still in force. Now, although this was a proceeding not in any way illegal, she was nevertheless captured by a Federal warship; a prize crew of two officers and thirteen men was put on board; and her own crew, with the exception of the master, the cook, and the steward, was taken out of her. Thus manned, she was being steered for a northern port, when her deposed captain persuaded his cook and steward to assist him in making one effort to regain possession of the ship. They caught the mate asleep in his berth, ironed and gagged him; the prize-master they found on deck, and treated similarly; three seamen who had the watch on deck were asked to go down into the scuttle—a storeroom near the helm—for a coil of rigging. The captain gave them this order as if he had accepted the inevitable, and was aiding the captors to navigate the ship. As soon as the three leaped down, the hatch was closed, and they were prisoners. The remainder of the prize crew, who were in the forecastle, were shut down and liberated one by one; but those who would give no promise of help to their new master were confined beside the unfortunates in the scuttle. Three, indeed, consented, but only one of them was a sailor; and with this crew of five, a vessel of eight hundred and eighty-four tons was brought to Liverpool through thirty days of bad weather. It is only a fitting conclusion to such a tale of daring to record that the intrepid seaman who conceived and carried out the enterprise was a native of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, which had already numbered among her sons the renowned Paul Jones.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XXXII.
‘This is awkward, Tom, awfully awkward,’ Mr Theodore Dupuy said to his nephew as they rode homeward. ‘We must manage somehow to get rid of this man as early as possible. Of course, we can’t keep him in the house any longer with your cousin Nora, now that we know he’s really nothing more—baronet or no baronet—than a common mulatto. But at the same time, you see, we can’t get rid of him anyhow by any possibility before the dinner to-morrow evening. I’ve asked several of the best people in Trinidad especially to meet him, and I don’t want to go and stultify myself openly before the eyes of the whole island. What the dickens can we do about it?’
‘If you’d taken my advice, Uncle Theodore,’ Tom Dupuy answered sullenly, in spite of his triumph, ‘you’d have got rid of him long ago. As it is, you’ll have to keep him on now till after Tuesday, and then we must manage somehow to dismiss him politely.’
They rode on without another word till they reached the house; there, they found Nora and Harry had arrived before them, and had gone in to dress for dinner. Mr Dupuy followed their example; but Tom, who had made up his mind suddenly to stop, loitered about on the lawn under the big star-apple tree, waiting in the cool till the young Englishman should make his appearance.
Meanwhile, Nora, in her own dressing-room, attended by Rosina Fleming and Aunt Clemmy, was thinking over the afternoon’s ride very much to her own satisfaction. Mr Noel was really after all a very nice fellow: if he hadn’t been so dreadfully dark—but there, he was really just one shade too dusky in the face ever to please a West Indian fancy. And yet, he was certainly very much in love with her! The very persistence with which he avoided reopening the subject, while he went on paying her such very marked attention, showed in itself how thoroughly in earnest he was. ‘He’ll propose to me again to-morrow—I’m quite sure he will,’ Nora thought to herself, as Rosina fastened up her hair with a sprig of plumbago and a little delicate spray of wild maiden-hair. ‘He was almost going to propose to me as we came along by the mountain-cabbages this afternoon, only I saw him hesitating, and I turned the current of the conversation. I wonder why I turned it? I’m sure I don’t know why. I wonder whether it was because I didn’t know whether I should answer “Yes” or “No,” if he were really to ask me? I think one ought to decide in one’s own mind beforehand what one’s going to say in such a case, especially when a man has asked one already. He’s awfully nice. I wish he was just a shade or two lighter. I believe Tom really fancies—he’s so dark—it isn’t quite right with him.’
Isaac Pourtalès, lounging about that minute, watching for Rosina, whom he had come to talk with, saw Nora flit for a second past the open window of the passage, in her light and gauze-like evening dress, with open neck in front, and the flowers twined in her pretty hair; and he said to himself as he glanced up at her: ‘De word ob de Lard say right, “Take captive de women!”’
At the same moment, Tom Dupuy, strolling idly on the lawn in the thickening twilight, caught sight of Pourtalès, and beckoned him towards him with an imperious finger. ‘Come here,’ he said; ‘I want to talk with you, you nigger there.—You’re Isaac Pourtalès, aren’t you?—I thought so. Then come and tell me all you know about this confounded cousin of yours—this man Noel.’