a rude voice.
"Don't you see that you are crushing my two boats and the men in them?"

"I did not order the boats or the men there," replied Christy calmly,
and in a gentle tone, for the captain of the blockade-runner was not ten
feet from him.

"I did," added the captain of the prize, for such she really was by this
time.

"Then you are responsible for them," said the commander of the St.
Regis.

"Do you mean to murder them?" gasped the other captain furiously.

"If they are killed you have sent them to their death!"

But the commander had no time to argue the matter with the irate
captain. He had rung three bells, and the ship was backing at full
speed. The momentum had not been sufficiently checked to stop her, and
the two boats were crushed to splinters. The seamen who were in them saw
what was coming, and they seized the ropes which had been dropped to
them by the boarders on the rail at the command of the captain, who did
not wish them to be sacrificed to the madness of their commander, and
they climbed to the chains of the Federal ship with the aid of the
boarders.

"Lay her aboard!" shouted Christy as soon as the headway of the ship had
been checked, and the grappling irons had been made fast.

The willing and active seamen poured from the rails to the deck of the
prize, their officers leading the way. The main hatch had been removed
and a light smoke was coming up through the opening. The hose from the
steam pump of the ship had been drawn on board, and the master was in
charge of it. At the command of the officers the men leaped below at all
the openings in the deck, and it was found that she had been fired in
half a dozen places.

In most of them the combustibles had only been lighted a few moments
before, and they had not become well-kindled. Except at the main hatch,
the men extinguished the flames with their hands and feet, and a stream
from the hose put out the one amidships. The hoseman shut off the water,
and the ship's company of the St. Regis were in full possession of the
prize.

"Anything more to be done, Captain Bristler?" asked the mate, as he
approached the commander.

"Nothing more can be done, Mr. Victor," replied the captain, who
appeared to be overwhelmed with wrath at the unexpected termination of
his voyage. "It is too late to scuttle her, and that vampire of a Yankee
has smashed both of our boats into kindling wood. We did not begin the
end soon enough."

But the beginnin