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There was a world of comfort in the words, and Marcy hoped the man knew what he was promising when he uttered them; but he thought he would feel more at his ease when he saw Beardsley's schooner at her moorings in the creek, and Beardsley himself at work in the field with his negroes.
But also I can still feel the heavy, unnatural silence of the two editors from which I was the chief sufferer, to me having fallen the honour of sitting in the centre of the high table between them. J. was away and, in his absence, I was distinguished by this mark of Beardsley's appreciation and Harland's friendliness. I was greatly flattered, but less entertained.
I shall have to accept my share of the prize money, for if I don't Beardsley's suspicions will be aroused; but I'll put it away and send it to the master of the Hollins the first good chance I get. Has Wat Gifford been here since I went to sea? "Walter has been here," replied Mrs. Gray, "and I understand that he has since gone back to the army, his furlough, which was a short one, having expired.
When Marcy came to Beardsley's gate, he thought it would be a neighborly act for him to ride in and ask if there was anything he could do for the captain's daughter; but she was not to be seen. Marcy afterward learned that she had taken up her abode with Mrs. Brown, with whom she intended to remain until her father could come home and make other arrangements for her comfort.
Beardsley's salary was at first three hundred dollars per annum, increasing to twelve hundred before the close of his services. He collected the sum of one million, three hundred and ninety-eight thousand, six hundred and forty-two dollars and sixty-eight cents. His accounts were models of nicety as well as accuracy, errors and discrepancies being equally unknown.
Kelsey was one of Beardsley's "renters" that is to say, he hired from the captain a few acres of ground, on which he managed to raise enough corn and potatoes to keep his family from absolute want, and a little log cabin in which he found shelter when he was not absent on his hunting and thieving expeditions.
Of course the recruits wanted to know all about it, and as they faced around and walked with him, Marcy gave them a short history of what the schooner had done since she went into commission. When he told how neatly that Yankee brig had slipped through Captain Beardsley's fingers, his companions looked at him in surprise. "What a pity," said one. "And yet you talk as if you were glad of it."
The overseer being gone, there was no one but himself left to manage the plantation; and he was glad to have the responsibility, for it gave him something to occupy his mind. When Aleck Webster told him that Hanson would not trouble him or his mother any more, he had also given him the assurance that he would never again be obliged to go to sea as Captain Beardsley's pilot.
When the prize was brought into the port of Newbern the whole town went wild with excitement, Captain Beardsley's agent being so highly elated that he urged the master of the Osprey to run out at once and try his luck again, before the capture of the Hollins became known at the North.
Things could not have worked more to Beardsley's satisfaction if he had had the planning of the storm himself. The privateer's crew never saw the steamer after the rain and mist shut her out from view; and when the sun arose the next morning, after the wildest night Marcy Gray ever experienced on the water, there was not a sail in sight.
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