"But I am afraid of them howitzers, all the same, and
am going to get shet of them the minute we get to Newbern. I don't
reckon I can give you a furlong to go home this time, 'cause it won't
take two days to get the schooner ready to take out a load of cotton."

"But you'll not need a pilot any longer," said Marcy, who was very much
disappointed.

"What's the reason I won't? Do you reckon I'm going to run out of
Hatteras in the face of all the war ships that are fooling around here?
Not much. And I'm not going to hug the coast, neither. I'll make Crooked
Inlet my point of departure, like I always have done, and then I'll
stand straight out to sea till I get outside the cruisers' beat. See?
Then I'll shape my course for Nassau. It'll give us a heap of bother and
we'll go miles out of our way; but we'll be safe."

"But suppose we are captured after all your precautions; what then?"

"Well, if we are we'll lose our vessel and be sent to jail; but we'll
not be treated as pirates, don't you see? The Northern folks are awful
mad 'cause our President has issued letters of mark-we and reprisal, and
their papers demand that every one of us who is taken shall be hung to
the yardarm. To tell you the honest truth, that kinder scared me, and
that's one reason why I want to get out of the business of
privateering."

"And you think you will still need a pilot?"

"Can't you see it for yourself from what I have told you?" asked
Beardsley, in reply. "And, Marcy, you'll make more money with less risk
than you do in this business. It ain't to be expected that men will run
the risk of going to jail for regular foremast hands' wages. They want
more money, and it's right that they should have it. Why, them
blockade-runners I told you about paid their hands five hundred dollars
apiece for the run to Nassau and back. What do you think of that?"

"I think it is good wages," replied Marcy. ["If the business was only
safe and honorable," he added, to himself.]

"Of course it is good wages. I don't expect to get a crew for any less;
but, as I said before, I'll do the fair thing by you. If you go home you
will have to enlist--I've heard the folks say that everybody had got to
show his hand one way or the other--and then you would get only twelve
or thirteen dollars a month. Think of that!"

Marcy was right when he told himself that the captain had him fast, and
that there was no release for him as long as the _Osprey_ remained in
commissio