“Why, my child, Billy went home on a furlough six months later Captain Forbes, if you please, and at present he owns a fine country grocery, from which the apples you’re eating this minute have just come, as they do every year regularly, and not once but he encloses a big packet of tobacco marked, ‘_Not dangerous, General, even to the enemy!_’” V THE BLOCKADE-RUNNER _A Dangerous Prize_ “Now, Lieutenant, the yarn,” said I, as I settled myself comfortably. A heavy sea was running; night had fallen; we were off watch, and snugly stowed between decks, with our legs under the gun-room table, and--jollier still--Lieutenant Bracetaut had promised a yarn. He looked musingly at the oscillating lantern above our heads, and then made a beginning: “It was not in these days of iron pots, cheese-boxes, and steam-engines, you must know,” said he; “but on the dear old frigate _Florida_--requiescat in pace!--without her mate before a stiff breeze, and with more rats in her hold than in a North Sea whaler. We were the flag-ship of the African squadron. Prize-money was scarce, and the days frightfully hot; when just as the day dropped at the close of September, we were overjoyed to hear tidings of--” “All hands on deck if you want a share in this prize!” bawled the boatswain down the companionway; and we ungraciously tumbled up, snapping Bracetaut’s yarn without compunction. “Where is she?” “What is she?” “I don’t see her.” “There she is to the sou’west,” said the cockswain, pointing with his spy-glass. “By Jove, a steamer, too!” cried Bracetaut, delightedly. “The _Great Eastern_, stuffed with cotton to her scuppers,” suggested Jerry Bloom, commencing a hornpipe; and every one else had some guess as to the character of the strange craft. [Illustration: CHASING A BLOCKADE-RUNNER (From a contemporary picture in _Harper’s Weekly_)] “Bracetaut is right,” said the Captain of the _Petrel_, who had been studying her intently with his telescope; “she’s a steamer, and a big ’un. But she’s not coming out; she’s making for the Lights with her best foot foremost.”