flag upon the deck so that the captain could see it. "Are
your halliards rove? Then why not go into commission at once, while
there is a crowd on the wharf to holler for you? Come aboard, you
fellows," he added, waving his hand to the crew, who were already
tumbling over the rail, "and stand by to cheer ship when the banner of
the Confederacy is run up. Did your vessel take a new name with her coat
of new paint, captain?"

"Yes, I kinder thought I would call her the _Fish-Hawk._"

"Isn't that a queer name for a privateer?" asked the agent.

"Why is it?" inquired the captain, who was busy folding the flag and
getting it ready to be run up to the masthead. "Don't the fish-hawk get
her living from the water, and aint I going to get mine the same way?"

"That's true. Well, then, call her _Osprey._ That sounds a little
better, _I_ think, and it means the same thing."

"All right. _Osprey_ she is," answered the captain, as he hauled up the
flag which had been made into a little bundle. "You stand by to set 'em
going."

The crew, as well as the rapidly increasing crowd on the wharf, who
watched the little bundle as it traveled toward the head of the mast,
did not wait for the agent to "set them going"! When it reached the top,
and a slight jerk from one of the halliards loosened the flag to the
breeze, they yelled vociferously, and patted one another on the back and
shook hands as though they considered it a very auspicious occasion.

"Now, give three cheers for Captain Beardsley and his privateer
_Osprey_, who have so promptly responded to our President's call. May
they strike such terror to the hearts of the Yankee nation that they
won't have a ship on the sea in six months from this day."

Of course such talk as this just suited the crowd on the wharf, who
yelled longer and louder than before. Of course, too, Marcy had to join
them in order to keep up appearances, but he almost despised himself for
it, and made the mental prediction that in a good deal less than six
months' time the people of Newbern would cease to remember that such a
schooner as the _Osprey_ ever existed, although her arrival was loudly
heralded in all the city papers. Her "saucy air" and the "duck-like
manner in which she rode the waters," were especially spoken of, and one
reporter, whose penetration was both surprising and remarkable,
discovered in Captain Beardsley a man who would "do and dare anything
for the success of the glorious cause he