But of all the remarkable incidents of this remarkable blockade there was none more noteworthy than the voyage of the British ship _Emily St Pierre_. The story rivals the inventions of a sea-romancer. This vessel left Calcutta with orders to make the coast of South Carolina and see if the blockade of Charleston was still in force. Now, although this was a proceeding not in any way illegal, she was nevertheless captured by a Federal warship; a prize crew of two officers and thirteen men was put on board; and her own crew, with the exception of the master, the cook, and the steward, was taken out of her. Thus manned, she was being steered for a northern port, when her deposed captain persuaded his cook and steward to assist him in making one effort to regain possession of the ship. They caught the mate asleep in his berth, ironed and gagged him; the prize-master they found on deck, and treated similarly; three seamen who had the watch on deck were asked to go down into the scuttle—a storeroom near the helm—for a coil of rigging. The captain gave them this order as if he had accepted the inevitable, and was aiding the captors to navigate the ship. As soon as the three leaped down, the hatch was closed, and they were prisoners. The remainder of the prize crew, who were in the forecastle, were shut down and liberated one by one; but those who would give no promise of help to their new master were confined beside the unfortunates in the scuttle. Three, indeed, consented, but only one of them was a sailor; and with this crew of five, a vessel of eight hundred and eighty-four tons was brought to Liverpool through thirty days of bad weather. It is only a fitting conclusion to such a tale of daring to record that the intrepid seaman who conceived and carried out the enterprise was a native of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, which had already numbered among her sons the renowned Paul Jones. IN ALL SHADES. CHAPTER XXXII. ‘This is awkward, Tom, awfully awkward,’ Mr Theodore Dupuy said to his nephew as they rode homeward. ‘We must manage somehow to get rid of this man as early as possible. Of course, we can’t keep him in the house any longer with your cousin Nora, now that we know he’s really nothing more—baronet or no baronet—than a common mulatto. But at the same time, you see, we can’t get rid of him anyhow by any possibility before the dinner to-morrow evening. I’ve asked several of the best people in Trinidad especially to meet him, and I don’t want to go and stultify myself openly before the eyes of the whole island. What the dickens can we do about it?’ ‘If you’d taken my advice, Uncle Theodore,’ Tom Dupuy answered sullenly, in spite of his triumph, ‘you’d have got rid of him long ago. As it is, you’ll have to keep him on now till after Tuesday, and then we must manage somehow to dismiss him politely.’