The Blockade Runner — page 119: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

120 THE BLOCKADH RUNNER. ments clandestinely opened their ports to the Con- federate cruisers for the purpose of coaling and re- victualling. This oF course was against esa) law, and could only be done ‘ under the rose.” : But it showed an undercurrent of hostile sentiment | against the United States, and an avowed sympathy for the Southern cause, that rendered the suppression of these scourges a hard and delicate task. Two days after the event narrated in the preceding chapter, a vessel of war, flying the Union Jack for- ‘ward and the Stars and Stripes at her gaff, was steam- ing slowly along some leagues east of Great Abaco Gee. which stood at the entrance of the northeast passage leading to the British port of Nassau. The sun was setting in all the glory of a calm sea, cilding a burnished pathway across the wavelets, and twilight was fast settling over the face of the deep. The captain of the cruiser was slowly pacing the weather side of his quarter-deck, absorbed in reflection. The officer of the watch, who happened to be Mr. Haskins, the first heutenant, was marching up and down the lee side, with his trumpet under his arm. A couple of midshipmen, drafted from the first class of the Naval Academy at Newport, for that institution had for politic reasons been transferred from Annapolis to Rhode Island, were leaning over the lee rail in quiet conversation. In the waist of the vessel and leaning against the long rifled Parrott pivot gun, were two men. One was our hero, Robert Bentham, the other a warrant officer, below him in rank. “We are here, then, on the lookout for the steamer COMMICLOOOKXS. COM