shove 'em into
jail, I wonder?"

The mate, who had come to the wise conclusion that the only thing he
could do was to make the best of the situation, did not answer the
captain's last question. All he said was:

"If you dump the cargo overboard the Yankees won't get it!"

"But they'll get my schooner, won't they?" Beardsley almost shouted.
"And do you reckon that I'm going to give them Newbern fellows the
satisfaction of knowing that I saved their goods by sending them to the
bottom? Not by a great sight. If that cruiser gets my property she'll
get their'n, too. I don't reckon we'd have time to clear the hold
anyway."

Marcy Gray had thought so all along. The lights were coming up at a hand
gallop, and already they were much nearer than they seemed to be, for
the shape of the steamer could be made out by the unaided eye. When
Beardsley ceased speaking, the sound of a gong was clearly heard, and a
minute later the steamer blew her whistle.

"What did I tell you, Morgan?" whined the captain. "She's slowing up,
and that whistle means for us to show lights. The next thing we shall
see will be a small boat coming off. I hope the swell'll turn it upside
down and drown every mother's son of her crew that--On deck, there," he
shouted, in great consternation. "Get out lights, and be quick about it.
She'll be on top of us directly."

"She can see us as well without lights as she can with 'em," growled the
mate, as he backed down slowly from the crosstrees. "I don't care if she
cuts us down. I'd about as soon go to the bottom as to be shut up in a
Yankee prison."

Marcy Gray was almost as badly frightened as Beardsley seemed to be. The
steamer was dangerously near, and her behavior and the schooner's proved
the truth of what he had read somewhere, that "two vessels on the ocean
seemed to exercise a magnetic influence upon each other, so often do
collisions occur when it looks as though there might be room for all the
navies of the world to pass in review." So it was now. The two vessels
drifted toward each other, broadside on, and the breeze was so light
that the _Hattie_ was almost helpless; but the stranger was well
handled; her huge paddle wheels, which up to this moment had hung
motionless in the water, began to turn backward, and presently Marcy let
go his desperate clutch upon the stay to which he was clinging, and drew
a long breath of relief. Whatever else the cruiser might do to the
_Hattie_ she did not mean to s