Marcy Gray had so little heart for the business in which he was perforce engaged, that he hoped something might happen at Newbern to prevent the schooner from sailing on her piratical mission--that the collector of the port might find some fault with her papers; that the howitzers and small arms might not be forthcoming; that it might be impossible to raise a crew; or that anything, no matter what, would come at the last moment to knock Beardsley's scheme in the head. But he was disappointed. The collector could not find any fault with the vessel's commission, for he himself had received it direct from the Confederate capital and forwarded it to the captain; the agent had scarcely slept since he received that dispatch from Nashville, and the result was that when the schooner sailed up to her wharf, she found the howitzers, four cases of muskets and sabers, and a crew of eighteen men, including two mates, waiting for her. The patriotic agent unfurled a brand-new Confederate banner as the schooner threw out a line by which her head could be drawn into the pier, and jumped aboard with it the moment she touched. "May it be the means of bringing you many an honest dollar," said he, as he spread the flag upon the deck so that the captain could see it. "Are your halliards rove? Then why not go into commission at once, while there is a crowd on the wharf to holler for you? Come aboard, you fellows," he added, waving his hand to the crew, who were already tumbling over the rail, "and stand by to cheer ship when the banner of the Confederacy is run up. Did your vessel take a new name with her coat of new paint, captain?" "Yes, I kinder thought I would call her the _Fish-Hawk._" "Isn't that a queer name for a privateer?" asked the agent. "Why is it?" inquired the captain, who was busy folding the flag and getting it ready to be run up to the masthead. "Don't the fish-hawk get her living from the water, and aint I going to get mine the same way?" "That's true. Well, then, call her _Osprey._ That sounds a little better, _I_ think, and it means the same thing." "All right. _Osprey_ she is," answered the captain, as he hauled up the flag which had been made into a little bundle. "You stand by to set 'em going." The crew, as well as the rapidly increasing crowd on the wharf, who watched the little bundle as it traveled toward the head of the mast, did not wait for the agent to "set them going"! When it reached the top, and a slight jerk from one of the halliards loosened the flag to the breeze, they yelled vociferously, and patted one another on the back and shook hands as though they considered it a very auspicious occasion. "Now, give three cheers for Captain Beardsley and his privateer _Osprey_, who have so promptly responded to our President's call. May they strike such terror to the hearts of the Yankee nation that they won't have a ship on the sea in six months from this day."