CHAPTER VI.

THE MAN HE WANTED TO SEE.

“What in the world did you bring those useless fellows back here for?” was the way in which Rodney Gray welcomed Lambert when he marched the two negroes up to the porch where he was sitting. “I was in hopes I had seen the last of them.”

“Why, dog-gone it, they’re yourn, an’ I jest want to see if what they have been tellin’ me is the truth,” said Lambert in a surprised tone. “I found ’em pikin’ along the highway with them packs onto their backs an’ no passes into their pockets——”

“Don’t need no passes no mo’,” interrupted Bob in a surly voice. “I am jes as free as you be, Mistah Lambert.”

“Jest listen at the nigger’s imperdence!” cried Lambert, astonished and angry because Rodney did not at once take Bob to task for his freedom of speech. “This is what comes of havin’ so many Yankees prowlin’ about the country.”

“That’s about the size of it. Bob is as free as you or I, and here is the paper that says so,” declared Rodney, taking a printed copy of the proclamation from his pocket.

“Who writ that there paper, an’ where did you get it?”

“The city is flooded with copies of it, and the first scouting party that rides through here will scatter it right and left among the negroes. President Lincoln wrote it.”

“What right’s he got to do anything of the sort? The niggers don’t belong to him.”

“Well, he’s done it, any way, and you and your friends will have to come out of the swamp and go to work if you hope to get anything to eat. My father says we can’t help ourselves, and that’s why I talked to Bob and the rest the way I did a while ago.”

“But I aint agreein’ to no such arrangement,” replied Lambert, who could scarcely have felt more aggrieved and insulted if he had been the largest slaveholder in the State.

“Nobody asked my father if he would agree to it, either; but he’ll have to take war as it comes, and so will you and all of us. The blacks are lost to us and you will have to go to work; I don’t see any way out of it. You might as well turn your prisoners loose and let them go among the Yanks if they want to.”

The ignorant Lambert could not yet understand the situation, for it took him a long time to get new things through his head, and this was the first he had heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. He looked hard at Rodney to see if he was in earnest, then swung his clubbed rifle in the air and shouted “Git!” at the top of his voice; whereupon the frightened darkies took to their heels and disappeared in an instant. But they did not retreat in the direction of the road. They made the best of their way to their cabins in the quarter and hid themselves there. When they were out of sight Lambert put his rifle under his arm and pulled out his cob pipe.

“I’m more of a secessioner now nor I ever was before,” said he. “We uns have just got to whop in this war, kase if we don’t our niggers will be gone, an’ where’ll I get a job of overseein’?”

“You’ll never be an overseer again,” answered Rodney. “You will have to go into the field and hoe cotton and cane yourself.”

“Not by no means I won’t,” said Lambert fiercely. “That there is nigger’s work, an’ I can’t seem to stoop to it. It don’t make no sort of difference to rich folks like you how the war ends, kase you’ve got cotton, an’ cotton is money these times. I aint got nary thing.”

Lambert watched Rodney out of the corners of his eyes while he was applying a lighted match to the tobacco with which he had filled his pipe, but the boy had nothing to say. He thought there was a threat hidden under Lambert’s last words.

“There’s one thing about it,” the latter continued after a little pause, “if we get whopped I won’t be the only poor man there is in Louisiany, tell your folks.”

With this parting shot he turned his mule about and rode out of the yard. And Rodney, angry as he was, let him go. He knew now just what he had to expect from the ex-Home Guard and made the mental resolution that, if his father would consent, he would be prepared to make a prisoner of Lambert the next time he met him.

“Something of the sort must be done, and before long, too,” thought Rodney when he went to bed that night, “or the first thing we know our cotton will go the way Mr. Randolph’s did. If the cotton was mine I would promise to hand Lambert a few hundred dollars as soon as it was sold, but then he is so treacherous I couldn’t put any faith in his promises. I wish he had kept away from here to-day. His visit worried me more than Lincoln’s proclamation.”

Rodney intended to go home and lay the matter before his father as soon as he had seen the hands fairly at work in the morning; but just as he arose from his breakfast Mr. Gray rode into the yard, accompanied by a stranger whose appearance and actions attracted Rodney’s attention at once and amused him not a little. He sat on a bare-back mule (Mr. Gray’s fine horses and saddles had disappeared with Breckenridge’s men), with his shoulders humped up, his head drawn down between them, his arms stiffened and his hands braced firmly against the mule’s withers, and his broad back bent in the form of an arch. He wore a blue flannel suit, a black slouch hat, a flowing neck-handkerchief tied low on his breast, and finer shoes and stockings than Rodney himself had been in the habit of wearing of late. He had a sharp blue eye, a bronzed face, a heavy blond mustache, and gazed about him with the air of one who might know a thing or two, even if he didn’t know how to ride a mule bare-back. Rodney hastened down the steps to welcome his father, and then looked inquiringly at the young man in blue, who placed his clenched hands on his hips and stared hard at Rodney.

“De oberseer he gib us trouble, An’ he dribe us round a spell; We’ll lock him up in de smokehouse cellar, Wid de key frown in de well. De whip is los’, de hand-cuff broken, An’ ole moster’ll have his pay; He’s ole ’nough, big ’nough, an’ oughter knowed better Dan to went an’ run away,”

sang the stranger in a melodious tenor voice. “Hallo, Johnny!”

“Hallo, yourself,” replied Rodney. He was so astonished at this strange greeting that he did not know what else to say. He gazed earnestly at the singer, but there was no smile of recognition under the blond mustache, though the blue eyes twinkled merrily. Then he looked toward his father for an explanation, but that gentleman, who had by this time dismounted, stood with his folded arms resting on his mule’s back, and had not a word of explanation to offer.

“You are a very nice-looking rebel, I must say,” were the visitor’s next words.

“I am aware of it,” returned Rodney; “but they are the best I’ve got to my back.”

“I was speaking of you and not of your clothes,” said the stranger hastily. “My good mother away up in North Carolina long ago taught me——”

“Jack! O Jack!” shouted Rodney joyfully. With one jump he reached his cousin’s side, and seizing his outstretched hand in both his own, fairly dragged him to the ground.

“Easy, easy!” cautioned Mr. Gray. “That’s Jack, but he isn’t quite as sound as he was the last time you met him.”

“I am overjoyed to see you after so long a separation,” said Rodney, in some degree moderating the energy of his hand-shaking. “How did you leave Marcy and his mother? and has Marcy always been true to his colors, as he so often declared he would be, no matter what happened? How came you here when nobody dreamed of seeing you, and where have you been to get hurt?”

“I have been offsetting your work,” replied Jack, rolling alongside Rodney, sailor fashion, as the latter slipped an arm through his own and led him to the porch. “You worked fifteen months to make this unholy rebellion successful, and I worked sixteen months and more to put it down; so you might as well have stayed at home with your mother.”

“Then you have been at sea?” exclaimed Rodney.

“Correct. There’s where I belong, you know. And I heard in a roundabout way that Marcy has had a brief experience, also. He was pilot on one of our gunboats during the fights at Roanoke Island, but where he is now I haven’t the least idea. It is a long time since I got a word from home,” said the sailor sadly. “I am on my way there now, and figuring to make some money by the trip. I am dead broke.”

“Haven’t you a discharge?”

“A sort of one, but nary cent of cash.”

“How does that come? Why didn’t your paymaster settle with you when he handed over your discharge?”

“Well, the first one couldn’t very handily, because he was captured, together with his money and accounts; and the second one couldn’t do it either, for he was captured too, and his money and books went to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, or into the hands of that pirate Semmes, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Why, Jack, what do you mean? You must have been in a fight.”

“That was what I thought when I found myself stranded on the deck of a strange ship without a bag or hammock to bless myself with, and no mess number,” said Jack, with a laugh. “My first vessel, the _Harriet Lane_, was captured at Galveston on New Year’s Day, and my second, the _Hatteras_, was sunk on the night of the 11th by the _Alabama_. Yes, I have been in two or three fights.”

“Of course we heard about the two you mention, but never once thought of your being there,” said Rodney. “Were you shot?”

“Oh, no. I was struck on the shoulder by something, don’t know what, when the gunboat _Westfield_ was blown up by her crew to keep her from falling into the hands of the rebels. If I hadn’t been a good swimmer I should now be rusticating at Tyler, Texas, or some other Southern watering-place.”

“Well, now, take this big chair—you have grown to be a pretty good-sized fellow since I last saw you—and settle back at your ease and tell us all about it,” said Rodney. “What do you mean when you say you are figuring on making some money this trip? And if you are dead broke, where did you get that blue suit? They don’t issue that style of clothes to the foremast hands in the navy, do they? Or are you an officer?”

“One at a time,” replied Jack. “One at a time, and your questions will last a heap longer. I am a trader.”

“O Jack,” exclaimed Rodney, who was all excitement in a moment. “Then you are just the man we are looking for. Have you a permit?”

“Well, I—you see—that is to say, no; I haven’t.”

“Then you are not the man we want to see at all,” said Rodney in a disappointed tone. “You can’t trade without it.”

“I am painfully aware of the fact. And perhaps you wonder how I am going to buy cotton when I am dead broke, don’t you? I have influential friends; and thereby hangs a tale as long as a yardarm.”

“Suppose you leave off bothering your cousin now and go home with us,” suggested Mr. Gray, when he saw that Rodney was settling himself to listen to a lengthy story. “We haven’t seen you at the house very often of late, and you are almost as much of a stranger to your mother as you would be if you lived in Vicksburg. We haven’t heard all Jack’s war history yet, and perhaps he will give it to us to-night after supper.”

Rodney was glad to agree to the proposition, and at his request Ned Griffin was invited to make one of the party, for he was sure to be one of the most interested listeners. In fact the Grays had come to look upon Ned as one of the family. Jack’s story was not a long one, and you ought to hear it, in order to know how he happened to “turn up” there in Mooreville when, as Rodney said, no one dreamed of seeing him, and we will tell it in our own way, leaving out a good deal of what Jack called “sailor lingo.”

The last time we saw Jack Gray was so long ago that you have perhaps forgotten that we ever mentioned his name. Instead of following in the footsteps of his father and becoming a planter, Jack had sailed the blue water from his earliest boyhood, and was the elder brother of our Union hero, Marcy Gray, who was taken from his home at dead of night by a party of blue-jackets to serve as pilot on Captain Benton’s gunboat during the fight at Roanoke Island. Jack was Union all over, and, even when it was dangerous for him to do so, could hardly refrain from expressing his contempt for those who were trying to break up the government. When we first brought him to your notice he had already had some thrilling experience with the enemies of the flag under which he had sailed all over the world, his vessel, the brig _Sabine_, having been one of the first to fall into the power of the Confederate cruiser _Sumter_.

If you have read “Marcy, the Blockade-Runner,” you will remember that the _Sabine_ was under the command of men who did not intend to remain prisoners a minute longer than they were obliged to; that the rebel banner had no sooner been hoisted at the peak in the place of their own flag, than they began laying plans to haul it down again, and that the captured brig was in the hands of the prize crew not more than twelve hours. Captain Semmes could not burn her as he would have been glad to do, for it so happened that she had a neutral cargo on board. The sugar and molasses with which her hold was filled were consigned to an English port in the island of Jamaica, and if he had destroyed it by applying the torch to the _Sabine_, the rebel commander would surely have brought his government into trouble with England. That was something he could not afford to do, so he determined to take his prize into the nearest Cuban port, in the hope that the Spanish authorities would permit him to land the cargo and sell the brig for the benefit of the Confederate government. There is every reason to believe that he would have been disappointed, for Spain was too friendly to the United States to give aid and comfort to her enemies; but before the matter could be put to the test the _Sabine’s_ men, with Jack Gray at their head, quietly overpowered the rebel prize crew that had been put aboard of her and filled away for Key West, which was the nearest Federal naval station. When they arrived there they turned their five prisoners over to the commandant and set sail for Boston, taking with them the valuable cargo that ought to have gone to Jamaica. When off the coast of North Carolina they had a short but rather exciting race with Captain Beardsley’s privateer _Osprey_, on which Marcy Gray, Sailor Jack’s brother, was serving as pilot; but the _Sabine_ was too swift to be overhauled, and her skipper too wide-awake to be deceived by the sight of the friendly flag which their pursuers gave to the breeze in the hope of alluring the defenceless merchantman to her destruction.

How the brig’s owners accounted for the cargo of molasses and sugar they so unexpectedly found on their hands Jack Gray neither knew nor cared, for his first and only thought was to reach home and see how his mother and Marcy were getting on. In this the master of the _Sabine_ stood his friend by securing for him a berth as second officer on board the fleet schooner _West Wind_, which, while claiming to be an honest coaster, was really engaged in a contraband trade that would have made her a lawful prize to the first Federal blockader that happened to overhaul and search her. Jack knew all about it and understood the risk he was taking; but he accepted the position when it was offered, because he could not see that there was any other way for him to get home. Although the schooner’s cargo was consigned to a well-known American firm in Havana, the owners did not mean that it should go there at all. They intended that it should be run through the blockade and sold at Newbern. Captain Frazier explained all this to Jack, and though the latter did not believe in giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Old Flag, he not only accepted the position of second mate and pilot of the _West Wind_, but also invested two-thirds of his hard-earned wages in quinine, calomel, and other medicines of which the Confederacy stood much in need, and sold them in Newbern so as to clear about twelve hundred dollars. But it wasn’t money that Jack Gray cared for just then. He wanted to see his mother and Marcy.

The enterprise was successful. Captain Frazier ran down the coast without falling in with any of the blockaders, Sailor Jack took the schooner through Oregon Inlet without the least trouble, the Confederates were ready to pay gold for her cargo, and then Captain Frazier loaded with cotton for Bermuda, while his pilot, with one of the _West Wind’s_ foremast hands for company, set out for home on foot. We have told how he came like a thief in the night and aroused his brother by tossing pebbles against his bedroom window, and what he did during the short time he remained under his mother’s roof. We have also described some of the exciting incidents that happened when Marcy took him out to the blockading fleet in the _Fairy Belle_—how they ran foul of Captain Beardsley’s schooner as they were passing through Crooked Inlet, and were afterward hailed by a steam launch, whose commanding officer would have given everything he possessed if he could have brought that same schooner within range of his howitzer for about two minutes—but they found one of the cruisers, the _Harriet Lane_, without much trouble and Sailor Jack remained aboard of her, while Marcy filled away for home. And we may add that the latter never heard from his brother again until he read in the papers that his vessel had been captured at Galveston.

Bright and early the next morning, after a short interview with Captain Wainwright, the commander of the _Harriet Lane_, Jack Gray was shipped with due formality and rated as “seaman” on the books of the paymaster, who ordered his steward to serve him two suits of clothes and the necessary small stores. Ten minutes afterward, having rigged himself out in blue and tossed his citizen’s suit through one of the ports into the sea, Jack was working with the crew as handily as though he had been attached to that particular vessel all his life. Of course he had never been drilled with small-arms or in handling big guns; but being quick to learn, his mates never had reason to call him a lubber, nor was he ever sent to the mast for awkwardness or neglect of duty.

The _Harriet Lane_ had been built for the revenue service, and was considered to be the finest vessel in it. She was small, not more than five hundred tons burden, but she was swift; and if a suspicious craft appeared in the offing, the _Lane_, oftener than any other steamer, was sent out to see who she was and what business she had there. Consequently the life Jack led aboard of her was as full of excitement and active duty as he could have wished it to be. Much to Marcy’s regret she took no part in the fight at Roanoke Island. Not being intended for so heavy work, she remained outside to watch for blockade runners, and so Marcy never had a chance to see how his brother looked in a blue uniform.

Not long after that they were still farther separated. For weeks there had been rumors that the government intended to make an effort to recapture some of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico that had been seized by the Confederates; but whether New Orleans, Galveston, or Mobile was to be taken first, or whether the _Lane_ was to have a hand in it, nobody knew. The last question was answered when all the vessels that could be spared from the Atlantic blockading fleet, Jack’s among the number, were ordered to report to Flag-officer Farragut at Ship Island in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way they picked up a large fleet of mortar schooners which had been ordered to rendezvous at Key West, and reached their destination six weeks in advance of the army of General Butler, which was to co-operate with them in the capture of New Orleans. But the time was not passed in idleness. They ran down to the mouths of the Mississippi, and worked a full month to get their vessels over the bar into the river. They found but fifteen feet of water there, while many of the fleet drew from three to seven feet more, so that, when they had been lightened almost to the bare hull, the tugs had to pull them through a foot or more of mud. It was tiresome and discouraging work, but the same patience, determination, and skill that carried Flag-officer Goldsborough safely through the gale at Hatteras enabled Farragut to overcome the obstructions at the mouths of the Mississippi, and on the 8th of April five powerful steam sloops, two large sailing vessels, seventeen gunboats, and twenty-one mortar schooners were fairly over the bar and ready for business. But three more weary weeks passed before active operations were begun, during which Farragut and Butler met at Ship Island and decided upon a plan of operations, and the river up to the forts was carefully surveyed, so that the Union commanders, by simply looking at the compasses in their binnacles, could tell how far off and in what direction each fort and battery lay, and how they ought to elevate and train their guns in order to reach them. Of course the rebels were not idle while these surveys were being made, and protested against them with every cannon they could bring to bear upon the boats and men engaged in the work; but “in spite of all dangers and difficulties the surveys were accomplished and maps prepared showing the bearing and distance from every point on the river to the flagstaffs in the forts.”

On the morning of the 17th the rebels began the fight in earnest by sending down a fire-raft that had been saturated with tar and turpentine; but a boat which put off from the _Iroquois_ towed the raft ashore, where it burned itself out, doing no harm to anybody. Then the mortar schooners took a hand and pounded Fort Jackson with their thirteen-inch shells until they set it on fire and destroyed all the clothing and commissary stores it contained. Then the barrier which extended straight across the river from Fort Jackson, and was formed of dismantled vessels securely anchored and bound together with heavy chains, was cut, and Farragut was ready to perform the feat that made him famous the world over and placed him where he rightfully belonged—at the head of our navy. He ran by the forts with the loss of but a single vessel, the _Varuna_, which was the swiftest and weakest in the squadron. Having been built for a merchantman she was not intended for such work as Farragut put upon her, but she won the honors of the fight before she went down, having helped sink or disable six of the rebel fleet, any one of which was fairly her match.

The _Lane_ took no part in this fight, but remained behind to guard Porter’s mortar schooners, which dropped down the river as soon as Farragut’s boats had passed the forts and closed with the Confederate fleet which came gallantly down the river to meet them.

“But our position was one of great danger, and we knew it,” said Sailor Jack at this point in his narrative. “There were at least fifteen vessels in the rebel fleet, two of which, the _Louisiana_ and _Manassas_, the former mounting sixteen heavy guns, were the main reliance of the enemy, and supposed to be able to deal with us as the _Merrimac_ dealt with the _Cumberland_ in Hampton Roads. But we never saw the _Louisiana_ until the thing was over, although we afterward learned that she had been assigned an important position in the fight. The other iron-clad was on hand, and began operations by shoving a fire-raft against the flagship, which ran aground in trying to escape from her. But instead of coming on down the river and destroying our mortar fleet, as she could have done very easily, for such wooden boats as the _Lane_ could not have stood against her five minutes, she rounded to and went back after Farragut, who ordered the _Mississippi_ to sink her. She didn’t succeed in doing that, but she riddled the _Manassas_ with a couple of broadsides, set her on fire, and let her float down the river with the current. I tell you I was frightened when I saw that ugly-looking thing bearing down on us. We opened fire on her, and in a few minutes she blew up and went down out of sight.”

Shortly after this, Jack went on to relate, one of the most important and impressive incidents of the seven days’ fight took place on board the _Harriet Lane_. When Porter received a note from Flag-officer Farragut stating that he had passed the forts in safety, destroying the Confederate flotilla on the way, and was on the point of starting for New Orleans, and suggesting that possibly the forts might surrender if summoned to do so, Porter sent a boat ashore to see what the rebels thought about it; and the answer was that they didn’t acknowledge that they had been whipped yet. Although the forts had been battered out of shape by the shower of heavy shells that had been rained into them, the garrisons could still find shelter in the bomb-proofs, and if it was all the same to Porter they would hold out a while longer. But the men who had to fight the guns did not look at it that way. They were ready to give up, for they knew they would have to do it sooner or later; and when Porter began another bombardment, which he did without loss of time, the men began deserting by scores, and the next day the rebel commander hauled down his flag.

“These battles were all won by the navy,” said Jack proudly, “and everything on and along the river was destroyed by or surrendered to the navy, for the soldiers didn’t come up till the trouble was all over. We went up with our little fleet and anchored abreast of Fort Jackson. A boat was sent ashore, and when it came back it brought General Duncan and two or three other high-up rebel officers, who did not act at all like badly beaten men, and they were received aboard the _Lane_ and taken into the cabin, where the terms of capitulation were to be drawn up and signed. They hadn’t been gone more than five minutes when some of the crew happened to look up the river, and there was that big iron-clad, the _Louisiana_, bearing down on us, a mass of flames. Then I was frightened again, I tell you. Mounting, as she did, sixteen heavy guns, she must have had all of twenty thousand pounds of powder in her magazine, and what would become of us if she blew up in the midst of our fleet? There wouldn’t be many of us left to tell the story. It was an act of treachery on the part of the rebel naval officers which Farragut was prompt to punish by sending them North as close prisoners, while the army officers were given their freedom under parole.”

“Did she do any damage when she blew up?” asked Rodney, who was deeply interested in the story.

“Not any to speak of,” replied Jack, “because the explosion took place before she got among us. Of course word was sent below as soon as we caught sight of her, and the order was promptly signalled to every vessel in sight to play out her cable to the bitter end, and stand by to sheer as wide as possible from the blazing iron-clad as she drifted down; but we had hardly set to work to obey the order when there was a wave in the air, which I felt as plainly as I ever felt a wave of water pass over my head; the _Lane_ heeled over two streaks, everything loose on deck was jostled about, and then there was a rumbling sound, not half as loud as you would think it ought to be, and the danger was over. The _Louisiana_ blew up before she got to us, and that was a lucky thing for the _Harriet Lane_.”

And Jack might have added that it was a lucky thing for the whole country, for the commander, Porter, who was in the _Lane’s_ cabin with the rebel officers, was afterward the fighting Admiral Porter, who commanded the Mississippi squadron. His death at that crisis would have been a national loss.