, out to the Federal
blockading fleet in his little schooner Fairy Belle, to give him a
chance to enlist in the navy. That was by far the most dangerous
undertaking in which Marcy had ever engaged, and at the time of which we
write, he had not seen the beginning of the trouble it was destined to
bring him. Not only was he liable to be overhauled by the Confederates
when he attempted to pass their forts at Plymouth and Roanoke Island,
but he was in danger of being shot to pieces by the watchful steam
launches of the Union fleet that had of late taken to patrolling the
coast. But he came through without any very serious mishaps, and
returned to his home to find the plantation in an uproar, and his mother
in a most anxious frame of mind.

Although Marcy Gray was a good pilot for that part of the coast, and
knew all its little bays and out-of-the-way inlets as well as he knew
the road from his home to the post-office, his older brother Jack was
the real sailor of the family. He made his living on the water. At the
time we first brought him to the notice of the reader he had been at sea
for more than two years, and it was while he was on his way home that
his vessel, the _Sabine_, fell into the hands of Captain Semmes, who had
just begun his piratical career in the Confederate steamer _Sumter._
But, fortunately for Jack, Semmes was not as vigilant in those days as
he afterward became. He gave the _Sabine's_ crew an opportunity to
recapture their vessel and escape from his power, and they were prompt
to improve it. By the most skilful manoeuvring, and without firing a
shot, they made prisoners of the prize crew that Semmes had put on board
the _Sabine_, turned them over to the Union naval authorities at Key
West, and took their vessel to a Northern port. On the way to Boston,
and while she was off the coast of North Carolina, the brig was pursued
and fired at by a little schooner which turned out to be Captain
Beardsley's privateer _Osprey_, on which Marcy Gray was serving in the
capacity of pilot.

When Jack Gray found himself in Boston, the first thing he thought of
was getting home. The Potomac being closely guarded against
mail-carriers and smugglers who, in spite of all the precautions taken
against them, continued to pass freely, and almost without detection,
between the lines as long as the war lasted, the only plan he could
pursue was to go by water. Being intensely loyal himself, Jack never
dreamed that Northern me