Of course such talk as this just suited the crowd on the wharf, who yelled longer and louder than before. Of course, too, Marcy had to join them in order to keep up appearances, but he almost despised himself for it, and made the mental prediction that in a good deal less than six months' time the people of Newbern would cease to remember that such a schooner as the _Osprey_ ever existed, although her arrival was loudly heralded in all the city papers. Her "saucy air" and the "duck-like manner in which she rode the waters," were especially spoken of, and one reporter, whose penetration was both surprising and remarkable, discovered in Captain Beardsley a man who would "do and dare anything for the success of the glorious cause he had been so prompt to espouse." The rest of that day and all the succeeding one were consumed in getting the provisions, ammunition, and arms aboard, mounting the howitzers, and stationing the crew. When the work was ended late at night, Marcy tumbled into his bunk between decks, heartily disgusted with the life he was leading. The schooner was to run out with the last of the ebb tide in the morning, so as to catch the flood tide, which would help her up to Crooked Inlet. CHAPTER XVIII. CONCLUSION. It took them the best part of the next day to run to their destination, and the whole of the following one to find and buoy the channel, which changed more or less with every storm that swept the coast. Marcy thought it a foolhardy piece of business to depend upon that treacherous inlet for a way of escape in case the schooner was discovered and pursued by a ship of war, and told Captain Beardsley so; but the latter simply smiled, referred Marcy to the work he had done that day, and reminded him that there were eight feet of water in the deepest part of the channel, and that the privateer, fully loaded, drew but little more than six.