the inquiry:

"Where do you uns think you are going?"

"We hope to see Newbern some day or other," was Jack's reply. "Now stand
by the wheel, Marcy, and I will see what I can do with the halliards."

The ceremony of saluting the Confederate flag was duly performed, but,
as Jack had predicted, no notice was taken of the courtesy. The soldiers
looked on in silence, and probably there was not one among them who knew
why the _Fairy Belle's_ colors were hauled down and up again so many
times; but when Jack made the halliards fast to the cleat and took his
brother's place at the wheel, the same voice called out:

"Will you uns bring us some late papers when you come back?"

The sailor replied that he would think about it, and then he said to
Marcy:

"You want to have your wits about you when you pass this place on your
way home. If they hail you and ask where your partner is, you can tell
them that I am in the navy. If they inquire where Julius was that they
didn't see him when we went down, he was below attending to his duties;
and if they ask about the papers, you were so busy that you couldn't get
them."

The next place where Jack wanted to show his captured flag was in
Croatan Sound. The Confederate force which had been mustered to defend
these waters, having been compelled to abandon, one after the other, all
the forts they had erected to defend the various inlets leading to the
open sea, were concentrating on Roanoke Island, which they were
preparing to hold at all risks. They were building forts, fitting out
gunboats, and sinking obstructions in the channels. Everything was well
under way when the boys went through, their captured banner serving as a
passport here as it had done at Plymouth. They took the deepest interest
in all they saw, little dreaming that the day would come when the big
guns, which now offered no objection to their progress, would pour a hot
fire of shot and shell upon both of them. Sailor Jack would have been
delighted if some one in whom he had perfect confidence had assured him
that such would be the case, but Marcy would have been overwhelmed with
astonishment.

"This island is already historic," said Jack, as the little schooner
dashed by the unfinished walls of Fort Bartow, and he waved his hat in
response to a similar salute from one of the working party on shore,
"and it'll not be many weeks before it will be more so."

"What has ever happened here to give this lonely island a pla