"I'm afraid of privateers," was Beardsley's response. "I heered there was some afloat, and I can't afford to fall in with any of 'em, kase everything I've got on 'arth is this schooner. If I lose her I'm teetotally ruined." "Well, then, why don't you hold in toward Hatteras, where you will be safe? There's a big fleet in there, and in a few days there'll be more." "You don't tell me! Much obleeged for the information! I will put that way as fast as this breeze will take me. Seen anything suspicious? No? Then good-by and farewell." Beardsley shouted out some orders, the schooner filled away so as to pass under the steamer's stern, and to Marcy's unbounded astonishment she was permitted to go in peace. The stranger's gong sounded again, and she also went on her way. There was scarcely a word spoken above a whisper until her lights had disappeared; then the schooner's own lanterns were hauled down, her head was turned to the point of the compass toward which it had been directed when the steamer was first discovered, and Captain Beardsley was himself again. "By gum!" said he, striding up and down the deck, pausing now and then to go through the undignified performance of shipping his mates on the back. "_By_ gum, I done it, didn't I! What sort of a Yankee do you reckon I'd make, Marcy? I talked just like one--through the nose, you know. Pretty good acting; don't you think so?" "It was good enough to save the schooner," replied Marcy. "And that was what I meant to do if I could. I wouldn't have give a dollar for my chances of getting shet of that steamer till she began to back away to keep from running us down, and then something told me that I'd be all right if I put a bold face on the matter. And that's what I done. Oh, I'm a sharp one, and it takes a better man than a Yankee to get ahead of me. I was really much obliged to him for telling me of that blockading fleet at Hatteras, for now I'll know better than to go nigh that place. Hold the old course, Morgan, and that will take us out of the way of coasters and cruisers, both. I'll go below and turn in for a short nap." "If I should follow this business until I am gray-headed I don't think I should ever again have so narrow an escape," said Marcy to himself, as he too went below to take a little needed rest. "Why, it seems like a dream; and somehow I can hardly bring myself to believe it really happened. If the Yankees talk the way Captain Beardsley did, all I can say for them is that they are queer folks."