amed as prizemaster, and the other as his first officer, with
a prize crew of twenty men, and the two steamers got under way.

CHAPTER XX

A VERY MELANCHOLY CONFEDERATE

Notwithstanding his military title, Colonel Homer Passford was not a
soldier, though he had once been a sort of honorary head of a regiment
of militia. His brother, Captain Horatio Passford, Christy's father, was
a millionaire in the tenth degree. More than twenty years before the war
he had assisted Homer to all the money he required to buy a plantation
in Alabama, near Mobile, where he had prospered exceedingly, though his
possessions had never been a tenth part of those of his wealthy brother.

Homer had married in the South, and was the father of a son and
daughter, now approaching their maturity, and Corny, the son, was a
soldier in the Confederate army. The most affectionate relations had
always subsisted between the two families; and before the war the
Bellevite had always visited Glenfield, the plantation of the colonel,
at least twice a year.

Florry Passford, the captain's daughter, being somewhat out of health,
had passed the winter before the beginning of the war at Glenfield, and
was there when the enemy's guns opened upon Fort Sumter. Captain
Passford had not supposed that his brother in Alabama would take part
with the South in the Rebellion, and with great difficulty and risk he
had gone to Glenfield in the Bellevite, for the purpose of conveying his
daughter to his home at Bonnydale on the Hudson, not doubting that Homer
and his family would be his passengers on the return to the North.

He was entirely mistaken in regard to the political sentiments of the
colonel, and found that he was one of the most devoted and determined
advocates of the Southern cause. The southern brother did not conceal
his opinions, and it was plain enough to the captain that he was
entirely sincere, and believed with all his mind, heart, and soul, that
it was his religious, moral, and social duty to espouse what he called
his country's cause; and he had done so with all his influence and his
fortune. He had even gone so far in his devotion to his duty as he
understood it, as to attempt to hand over the Bellevite, though she was
not in Mobile Bay on a warlike mission, to the new government of the
South, and had taken part personally in an expedition extended to
capture her.

The steam-yacht had been armed at the Bermudas, and fought her way out
o