"I don't believe there's no money in that there house," was what the captain was saying to himself. "Sly old fox," thought Marcy. "I knew he would betray his secret if I only held my tongue and gave him a chance to do it." And then he asked the captain when he expected to get the schooner ready for sea, and whether or not any prizes had been brought into port during his absence. "There's been one prize brought in worth ten thousand dollars more'n our'n, dog-gone it all--there she is right over there--and there's been three blockade-runners went out and two come in," was the captain's answer. "I didn't see why they should call 'em blockade-runners when we didn't think there was a blockade at all, excepting the paper one that appeared in Lincoln's proclamation; but seeing that the brig _Herald_ ain't been heard from since she run out of Wilmington, I begin to mistrust that there's war vessels outside, and that the _Osprey_ may have a chance to show her heels. If that happens we'll make the best time we know how for Crooked Inlet, and trust to you to bring us through." "You won't need any help from me," was what the boy said to himself. "I'll bet my share of that prize-money, that if we get into trouble with a Union cruiser you will take command of the schooner yourself and sail her through Crooked Inlet as slick as falling off a log." "The folks around here and Wilmington have been hoping that the _Herald_ might be captured, and that the United States people will have the backbone to hold fast to her," added Captain Beardsley. "Why do they hope for any such bad luck as that?" inquired Marcy, considerably surprised. "May be it wouldn't be bad luck. You see she is a Britisher, the _Herald_ is, and her cargo was consigned to an English house all fair and square. A blockade, to be legal and binding upon foreign nations, must be effectual," said the captain, quoting the language his agent had often used in his hearing. "A paper blockade won't do; and if the Yankees can't send ships enough here to shut up our ports completely, any Britisher or Frenchman can run in and out as often as he feels like it, and the Yankees dassent do a thing to him. If the _Herald_ has been captured she will have to be given up." "But suppose Uncle Sam won't give her up?" "We are hoping he won't, for that will get the British folks down on him; and between the two of us we'll give him such a licking that he'll never get over it. See?" Yes; Marcy saw, now that the situation had been explained to him, but it was something he had never thought of before. Almost the first lesson he learned in history was that England had no love for the United States, and if she took a hand in the war that was surely coming, why then---- "Why, then, France may help Uncle Sam," exclaimed Marcy. "She has always been friendly to us, and didn't she send troops here during our Revolutionary war to help us whip the English?"