which his cargo of cotton was
consigned. "Besides, I must keep up appearances, or I'll get into
trouble."

"Turn to, all hands, and get off the hatches," shouted one of the mates.
"Lively now, for the sooner we start back the sooner we'll get there."

Marcy did not know whether or not he was included in this order
addressed to "all hands," but as the officer looked hard at him he
concluded he was. At any rate he was willing to work, if for no other
purpose than to keep him from thinking. Somehow he did not like to have
his mind dwell upon the homeward run.

CHAPTER VI.

RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.

The gang of 'longshoremen, which was quickly sent on board the _Hattie_
by the Englishman to whom we referred in the last chapter, worked to
such good purpose that in just forty-eight hours from the time her lines
were made fast to the wharf, the blockade-runner was ready for her
return trip. Meanwhile Marcy Gray and the rest of the crew had little to
do but roam about the town, spending their money and mingling with the
citizens, the most of whom were as good Confederates as could have been
found anywhere in the Southern States. Marcy afterward told his mother
that if there were any Union people on the island they lived in the
American Consulate, from whose roof floated the Stars and Stripes. Marcy
was both astonished and shocked to find that nearly every one with whom
he conversed believed that the Union was already a thing of the past,
and that the rebellious States never could be whipped. One day he spoke
to Beardsley about it, while the latter was pacing his quarter-deck
smoking his after-dinner cigar.

"If those English sailors I was talking with a little while ago are so
very anxious to see the Union destroyed, I don't see why they don't ship
under the Confederate flag," said he. "But what has England got against
the United States, anyway?"

"Man alive, she's got everything against 'em," replied the captain, in a
surprised tone. "Didn't they lick old England twice, and ain't the
Yankee flag the only one to which a British army ever surrendered?
You're mighty right. She'd be glad to see the old Union busted into a
million pieces; but she's too big a coward to come out and help us open
and above board, and so she's helping on the sly. I wish the Yankees
would do something to madden her, but they're too sharp. They have give
up the _Herald_--the brig I was tel