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I may mention that blockade-runners always lived well; may be acting on the principle that 'good people are scarce'; so we kept a famous table and drank the best of wine. An English man-of-war was lying in the harbour, whose officers frequently condescended to visit us, and whose mouths watered at what they saw and heard of the profits and pleasures of blockade-running.
The American Government had determined to do everything in its power to stop blockade-running, and had lately increased the force of blockaders on the southern coast by some very fast vessels built at New York.
Bultitude, at all events, had reason to be grateful for this toleration, for in one of the bound volumes supplied to him he found a most interesting and delightfully unsectarian novel, which appealed to his tastes as a business man, for it was all about commerce and making fortunes by blockade-running; and though he was no novel reader as a rule, his mind was so relieved and set at rest by the prospect of seeing the end of his trouble at last, that he was able to occupy his mind with the fortunes of the hero.
"When you are more at leisure, I hope you will indulge me in an explanation of the manner in which a Long Islander happens to be engaged in blockade-running." "I am an American citizen now, as I have always been; I shall be only too happy to get back under the old flag. As an evidence of my sincerity, I will assist you in getting the Reindeer out of this place.
"I never expect to see such flush times again in my life," said a blockade-running captain, speaking of Nassau. "Money was as plentiful as dirt. I have seen a man toss up a twenty-dollar gold piece on "heads or tails," and it would be followed by a score of the yellow boys in five seconds.
Being aware of this, some of the first shipbuilders in England and Scotland were put, by persons engaged in blockade-running, on their mettle, to try and build steamers to beat them, and latterly it became almost a question of speed, especially in the daylight adventures, between blockaders and blockade-runners.
It was in the spring of 1862 that I found matters beginning to settle down to a degree that threatened monotony; and with the termination of the winter gaieties at Naples and the close of the San Carlo, I seriously bethought me of accepting the offer of a naval friend who was about to engage in blockade-running, and offered to land me in the Confederate States, when a recrudescence of activity on the part of the brigand bands in Calabria induced me to turn my attention in that direction.
Then came the flare of rockets to notify the rest of the blockading fleet, the hot pursuit with boilers crowded to bursting, the boom of the big guns fired at random in the dark, and the exultation of a capture or the disappointment of failure. Blockade-running became a regular business, enormously profitable.
I may now, I trust, without appearing egotistical, digress slightly from the narrative to give an account of how I managed with my own private venture, which I had personally to attend to; for it is scarcely necessary to mention that in blockade-running everyone must look after himself. If he does not his labour will have been in vain.
I am afraid his services were not half appreciated as they ought to have been, for success, in blockade-running as in everything else, is a virtue, whereas bad luck, even though accompanied with the pluck of a hero, is always more or less a crime not to be forgiven.
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