they saw a Federal steamer glide slowly
past, eying them as the fox eyed the grapes.

The adventure was still not at its end. Mr. Taylor hired a schooner in
the harbor to go to Nassau and bring back a cargo of coal, he and Murray
Aynsely, a passenger, going in it. But the night proved a terrible one,
a hurricane rising, and the crew growing so terrified by the fury of the
gale and the vividness of the lightning that they nearly wrecked the
schooner on the rocks. When the weather moderated the men refused to
proceed, and it was only by dint of a show of revolvers and promise of
reward that Taylor and his passenger induced them to go on. On reaching
Nassau they were utterly worn out, having been almost without sleep for
a week, while Taylor's feet were so swollen that his boots had to be cut
off.

Thus ended one of the most notable chases in the history of
blockade-running, it having lasted fifteen hours and covered nearly two
hundred miles. Fortunate was it for the "Banshee" that the "James
Adger," her pursuer, had no bow-chasers, and that the weather was too
ugly for her to venture to yaw and use her broadside guns, or the
"Banshee" might have there and then ended her career.

_FONTAIN, THE SCOUT, AND THE BESIEGERS OF VICKSBURG._

The Civil War was not lacking in its daring and interesting adventures
of scouts, spies, despatch-bearers, and others of that interesting tribe
whose field of operations lies between the armies in the field, and
whose game is played with life as the stake, this being fair prey for
the bullet if pursued, and often for the rope if captured. We have the
story of one these heroes of hazard to tell, a story the more
interesting from the fact that he was a cripple who seemed fit only to
hobble about his home. It is the remarkable feat of Lamar Fontain, a
Confederate despatch-bearer, which the record of the war has nothing to
surpass.

Fontain's disability came from a broken leg, which had left him so
disabled that he could not take a step without a crutch, and in mounting
a horse was obliged to lift the useless leg over the saddle with his
right hand. But once in the saddle he was as good a man as his fellow,
and his dexterity with the pistol rendered him a dangerous fellow to
face when it became a question of life or death.

We must seek him at that period in 1863 when the stronghold of
Vicksburg, on which depended the Confederacy's control of the
Mississippi, was closely invested by