e schooner, which he was able to do without
help from anybody. In the bundle of papers that the messenger boy gave
him, Marcy was glad to find three that were published in Newbern. These
he kept out to be read at once, intending when he passed Plymouth to
throw them ashore for the soldiers; but the Northern papers he stowed
away in one of the lockers beside the flags. He wanted time to read them
carefully, for he believed they would tell him the truth; and that was
something he had not heard for many a day. It seemed to him that he had
not been below more than half an hour when he heard a hail, to which the
hoarse voice of the man at the wheel responded. A moment later it
added:

"On deck, if you please, sir. I've got to leave you now. My launch is
close aboard."

She was almost alongside by the time Marcy reached the deck, and five
minutes later the officer in command of her again came over the rail;
but this time he came alone. There were no blue-jackets with drawn
cutlasses at his heels.

"I guess you've had luck," were the first words he said. "I don't see
the other fellow anywhere."

"No, sir. We left him aboard your vessel," replied Marcy. "He will be
examined and sworn in in the morning. By the way, what did the officer
of the deck mean when he said that the paymaster was asleep as well as
the doctor? What has the paymaster to do with swearing him in?"

"He or his clerk has to take the descriptive lists, you know, sir,"
replied the sailor. "Then he gets an order from the captain to give the
men their clothes and small stores--tobacco, soap, sewing silk, and the
like, you know, sir. I was told to come back and report to you, Mr.
Colson."

"Very good. Get aboard the launch. Can you and the moke get along by
yourselves?" he continued, turning to Marcy. "I see you have but one
hand."

"Oh, yes, sir; we'll get along all right," answered Marcy, who was very
much afraid that the officer would ask him how he had got hurt. "Seen
anything of that blockade-runner since we left?"

"I haven't seen a thing except this schooner to-night," was the reply;
and Marcy judged from the tone in which the words were uttered that the
officer was much disgusted at being obliged to stay out there all night
in an open boat for nothing. No doubt he would have been still more
disgusted to learn that if he had been two miles farther up the coast he
would have had a chance of capturing the "audacious" little vessel that
he was lookin