The carpenter and his assistants were still at work on the berth, and Christy, placing his valise near it, seated himself by it. For the first time since he came on board of the Vernon he had an opportunity to reflect upon the events of the day. Corny Passford was the present master of the situation. He had not been aware till he met him in the captain's cabin, that his cousin was even in the vicinity of New York. With an amount of assurance for which he had not given him credit, Corny had undertaken to personate his nautical relative, and was now actually on his way to the Gulf to take command of the Bronx. The little gunboat had certainly done a great deal of mischief to the Confederate interests, for she had captured two valuable vessels intended for the southern navy, to say nothing of half a dozen others loaded with cotton, and ready to sail. From the Confederate point of view, it was exceedingly desirable that she should be prevented from doing any further injury to the maritime interests of the South. But it seemed almost incredible that Corny Passford should be employed to bring about her capture by stratagem. His cousin was not a sailor; at least, he had not been one the last time he had met him, and it was hardly possible that he had learned seamanship, navigation, and naval tactics in so short a time, and so far as Christy knew, with little practical experience. He had seen the commission which Corny presented to the captain of the Vernon, and recognized it as his own. In spite of the statements his cousin had made, Christy saw that the handwriting of the report he submitted as a copy of the genuine document was in Corny's usual handwriting. Where had he obtained the commission, and where the original report? These were not hard questions, now that the preliminaries of the plot had been fully developed. Walsh, the man-servant at Bonnydale, was now a seaman on board of the Vernon, under the real or assumed name of Byron. He denied his identity, as he would naturally do under the circumstances; but Christy had not a doubt that he was the man who had suddenly disappeared after the mysterious visitation of the night before. Doubtless, Corny had been the visitor at the mansion, and had procured the contents of the official envelope on this occasion. He appeared to have been unwilling to trust Byron, as the seaman preferred to be called, and had attended to the business in person with the assistance of his confederate. The report was lying on the table in his chamber, and Byron could have borrowed it for any length of time to enable Corny to make a copy. Whoever had visited his chamber in the night, whether Corny or the man-servant, he must have taken the official envelope to the library, or some other part of the house, for it had been carefully opened, and restored to its former condition after the genuine documents in it had been replaced by the blank paper.