Captain Barney was too much of a sailor himself to own any other than a stiff, weatherly boat; and such was eminently the character of the Dashaway. She breasted the big waves like a mass of solid oak; and though the spray dashed furiously over her, as she leaped over the angry billows, John Somers felt as safe in her as he would in the kitchen of his mother’s cottage. The wind was east, and the sky overcast, which made the night exceedingly gloomy and dark. The intrepid young skipper could only discern the sombre outlines of the islands and the headlands of the main shore; but these were sufficient to enable him to lay his course. Lieutenant Bankhead, though an older and perhaps a better sailor, did not feel so much confidence in the weatherly qualities of the Dashaway. He was accustomed to large vessels, and he could not help realizing that his life was in the keeping of the bold youth at the helm. He was silent and thoughtful. His father was dying at home; and, without this solemn fact, a man with a soul could not but be impressed and awed by the wild war of the elements, within the circle of whose contending forces the little bark that bore him on his mission of parental affection was struggling on her course. He was silent and anxious; and John, full alive to the responsibility which rested upon him, was too busy and too earnest to talk. The roaring of the wind, the surging of the waves, and the thumping of the boat against the sturdy sea, were the only sounds to be heard; and they were enough to occupy the whole mind of a thinking being, and idle words seemed to be an insult to the majesty of the storm. On flew the Dashaway, till the dark form of Fort Warren appeared like a gloomy shadow upon the eastern sky. They were soon sheltered from the fierceness of the blast by the high walls of the fortification, and the boat came into comparatively still water. The spell seemed to be broken; and the lieutenant, who had hardly spoken a word since the boat got under way, uttered some hearty commendations of the skill of the boatman. By the exercise of the same good judgment which had enabled him to bring his little craft in safety through the darkness and the storm to her destination, John, with the assistance of his passenger, laid her alongside the wharf which forms the only landing-place at the island. Here, as Mr. Bankhead had anticipated, a serious difficulty presented itself. The fort was at that time, as it is at present, used as a place of confinement for political prisoners. Messrs. Mason and Slidell had just been placed within its strong walls, to meditate upon the folly and crime of rebellion against the best government on earth; and the military regulations, which excluded the curious and the lawless, were necessarily very stringent. “Keep off, keep off!” shouted the sentinel on the wharf, as the boat rounded up by the pier,--“keep off, or I’ll fire into you!”