It was a quaint abode, constructed in most primitive style, with three rooms around one big chimney, in which North Carolina pine knots supplied heat and light on winter nights. This cottage became historic, and was famed for the frugal but tempting meals which its charming hostess would prepare for her distinguished guests. Besides the many illustrious Confederate Army and Navy officers who were delighted to find this bit of sunshiny civilisation on the wild sandy beach, ensconced among the sand dunes and straggling pines and black-jack, many celebrated English naval officers enjoyed its hospitality under assumed names:—Roberts, afterwards the renowned Hobart Pasha, who commanded the Turkish navy; Murray, now Admiral Murray-Aynsley, long since retired, after having been rapidly promoted for gallantry and meritorious services in the British navy; the brave but unfortunate Hugh Burgoyne, V.C., who went down in the British iron-clad, _Captain_, in the Bay of Biscay; and the chivalrous Hewett, who won the Victoria Cross in the Crimea and was knighted for his services as ambassador to King John of Abyssinia, and who, after commanding the Queen's yacht, died lamented as Admiral Hewett. Besides these there were many genial and gallant merchant captains, among them Halpin, who afterwards commanded the _Great Eastern_ while laying ocean cables; and famous war correspondents—Hon. Francis C. Lawley, M.P., correspondent of the _London Times_, and Frank Vizitelli of the _London Illustrated News_, afterwards murdered in the Soudan. Nor must the plucky Tom Taylor be forgotten, supercargo of the _Banshee_ and the _Night Hawk_, who, by his coolness and daring, escaped with a boat's crew from the hands of the Federals after capture off the fort, and who was endeared to the children as the "Santa Claus" of the war. At first the little Confederate was satisfied with pork and potatoes, corn-bread and rye coffee, with sorghum sweetening; but after the blockade-runners made her acquaintance the impoverished store-room was soon filled to overflowing, notwithstanding her heavy requisitions on it for the post hospital, the sick and wounded soldiers and sailors always being a subject of her tenderest solicitude, and often the hard worked and poorly fed coloured hands blessed the little lady of the cottage for a tempting treat.