When the _West Wind_ was a short distance out from Boston, the second mate learned by accident that one of his best foremast hands was also bound for his home in North Carolina. His name was Aleck Webster, and his father lived on a small plantation which was not more than an hour's ride from Nashville. Being a poor man Mr. Webster did not stand very high in the estimation of his rich neighbors, but that made no sort of difference to Jack Gray, and a warm and lasting friendship at once sprung up between officer and man. Although they belonged to a vessel that was fitted out to run the blockade they were both strong for the Union, and many an hour of the mid-watch did they while away in talking over the situation. All they knew about their friends at home was that they were opposed to secession; but they dared not say so, because they were surrounded by rebels who would have been glad of an excuse to burn them out of house and home. The two friends got angry as often as they talked of these things, but of course they could not decide upon a plan of operations until they had been at home long enough to "see how the wind set," and "how the land lay." We have told what they did when they got ashore. When they were paid off and discharged in Newborn they made their way home by different routes, Jack arousing his brother in the dead of the night by tossing pebbles against his bedroom window, and afterward going off to the Federal fleet to enlist under the flag he believed in. Aleck Webster remained ashore for a longer time; and finding that his father belonged to an organized band of Union men who held secret meetings in the swamp, and whose object it was to oppose the tactics pursued by their rebel neighbors, he joined his fortunes with theirs, and went to work with such energy that in less that two weeks' time he had the settlement in such a panic that its prominent citizens thought seriously of calling upon the garrison at Plymouth for protection. It was Mrs. Gray's misfortune to have many secret enemies about her, and the meanest and most dangerous among them were Lon Beardsley, who lived on an adjoining plantation, and was the owner and captain of the schooner to which Marcy belonged, and her overseer, whose name was Hanson. Beardsley's enmity was purely personal; but with Hanson it was a matter of dollars and cents. The captain took Marcy to sea against his will, because he wanted to persecute his mother; while the overseer was working for the large reward Colonel Shelby had promised to give if Hanson would bring him positive information that Mrs. Gray was in reality the Union woman she was supposed to be, and that she had money concealed in her house. When Sailor Jack had been at home long enough to find out how and by whom his mother was being persecuted, he told Aleck Webster about it, and the latter stopped it so quickly that everybody was astonished, and the guilty ones alarmed.