PTER II. Congressia

CHAPTER III. Capua

CHAPTER IV. Friends in Council

CHAPTER V. The Ford

CHAPTER VI. The Ferry

CHAPTER VII. Fallen Across the Threshold

CHAPTER VIII. The Road to Avernus

CHAPTER IX. Caged Birds

CHAPTER X. Dark Days

CHAPTER XI. Homeward Bound

CHAPTER XII. A Popular Armament

CHAPTER XIII. The Debatable Ground

CHAPTER XIV. Slavery and the War

BORDER AND BASTILLE

CHAPTER I.

A FOUL START.

Looking back on an experience of many lands and seas, I cannot recall a
single scene more utterly dreary and desolate than that which awaited
us, the outward-bound, in the early morning of the 20th of last
December. The same sullen neutral tint pervaded and possessed
everything--the leaden sky--the bleak, brown shores over against us--the
dull graystone work lining the quays--the foul yellow water--shading one
into the other, till the division-lines became hard to discern. Even
where the fierce gust swept off the crests of the river wavelets,
boiling and breaking angrily, there was scant contrast of color in the
dusky spray, or murky foam.

The chafing Mersey tried in vain to make himself heard. All other
sounds--a voice, for instance, two yards from your ear--were drowned by
the trumpet of the strong northwester. All through the past night, we
listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages
trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when
they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake
their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing.
For forty-eight hours the storm-signals had never been lowered, nor
changed, except to intimate the shifting of a point or two in the
current of the gale, and few vessels, if any, had been found rash enough
to slight "the admiral's" warning.

It had been gravely discussed, we heard afterwards, by the owners and
captain of "The Asia," whether she should venture to sea that day;
finally, the question was left to the latter to decide. There are as
nice points of honor, and as much jealous regard for professional credit
in the merchant service as in any other. Only once, since the line was
started, has a "Cunarder" been kept in port by wind or weather--this was
the commander's first trip across the Atlantic since his promotion; you
may guess which way the balance turned.

We waited on the landing-stage one long cold hour. The huge square
structure, ordina