Taken by the Enemy | Page 4

the waist.
"But we shall not go up to the city," replied Captain Passford, in a very decided tone. "But that shall make no difference in your pilot's fees.--Captain Breaker."
The captain of the steamer, who had also come out of the pilot-house, had stationed himself within call of the owner to receive the next order, which might throw some light on the reason for anchoring the steamer so near her destination on a full sea. He presented himself before the magnate of the yacht, and indicated that he was ready to take his further orders.
"You will see that the pilot is paid his full fee for taking the vessel to a wharf," continued Captain Passford.
The captain bowed, and started towards the companionway; but the owner called him back.
"I see what looks like a tug to the westward of us. You will set the signal to bring her alongside," the magnate proceeded.
This order was even more strange than that under which the vessel had come to anchor so near home after her long cruise; but the captain asked no questions, and made no sign. Calling Beeks, he went aft with the pilot, and paid him his fees.
When the American flag was displayed in the fore-rigging for the tug, Captain Passford, with his gaze fixed on the planks of the deck, walked slowly to the place where his wife was seated, and halted in front of her without speaking a word. But there was a quivering of the lip which assured the lady and her son that he was still struggling to suppress his agitation.
"What is the matter, Horatio?" asked the wife, in the tenderest of tones, while her expression assured those who saw her face that the anxiety of the husband had been communicated to the wife.
"I need hardly tell you, Julia, that I am disturbed as I never was before in all my life," replied he, maintaining his calmness only with a struggle.
"I can see that something momentous has happened in our country," she added, hardly able to contain herself, for she felt that she was in the presence of an unexplained calamity.
"Something has happened, my dear; something terrible,--something that I did not expect, though many others were sure that it would come," he continued, seating himself at the side of his wife.
"But you do not tell me what it is," said the lady, with a look which indicated that her worst fears were confirmed. "Is Florry worse? Is she"--
"So far as I know, Florry is as well as usual," interposed the husband. "But a state of war exists at the present moment between the North and the South."
CHAPTER II
THE BROTHER AT THE SOUTH
Even five months before, when the Bellevite had sailed on her cruise, the rumble of coming events had been heard in the United States; and it had been an open question whether or not war would grow out of the complications between the North and the South.
Only a few letters, and fewer newspapers, had reached the owner of the yacht; and he and his family on board had been very indifferently informed in regard to the progress of political events at home. Captain Passford was one of those who confidently believed that no very serious difficulty would result from the entanglements into which the country had been plunged by the secession of the most of the Southern States.
He would not admit even to himself that war was possible; and before his departure he had scouted the idea of a conflict with arms between the brothers of the North and the brothers of the South, as he styled them.
Captain Passford had been the master of a ship in former times, though he had accumulated his vast fortune after he abandoned the sea. His father was an Englishman, who had come to the United States as a young man, had married, raised his two sons, and died in the city of New York.
These two sons, Horatio and Homer, were respectively forty-five and forty years of age. Both of them were married, and each of them had only a son and a daughter. While Horatio had been remarkably successful in his pursuit of wealth in the metropolis, he had kept himself clean and honest, like so many of the wealthy men of the great city. When he retired from active business, he settled at Bonnydale on the Hudson.
His brother had been less successful as a business-man, and soon after his marriage to a Northern lady he had purchased a plantation in Alabama, where both of his children had been born, and where he was a man of high standing, with wealth enough to maintain his position in luxury, though his fortune was insignificant compared with that of his brother.
Between the two brothers and their families the most kindly relations had always