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.

The young pilot was surprised at the ease with which the master of the
schooner threw off his 'longshore manners and assumed the habit and
language of a seafaring man. He had been a trader in a small way ever
since Marcy could remember, and he said himself that the longest voyage
he ever made was from some port in Cuba to New York. He had a way of
going and coming at very irregular intervals. Sometimes his schooner
would lie idle for months, and Beardsley would work among his negroes
with so much industry and perseverance, that the planters around him
would come to think he had given up the sea for good; but all on a
sudden he would disappear as if by magic, and it would be a long time
before any one could find out where he was or what he had been doing;
and they were obliged to take his word for that. Marcy Gray was not the
only one who thought that the term "smuggler" would come nearer to
describing his vocation than the word "trader." But in spite of his
er