Taken by the Enemy by the Enemy by Oliver Optic (novel books to read txt) 📖

and his lips moved as though he were muttering something to himself. He did not look at the paper in his hands again; and whatever the startling intelligence it contained, he seemed to have taken it all in at a glance.

Christy, as the remarkably good-looking young man was called by all in the family and on board of the Bellevite, appeared to be even more astonished than his mother at the singular conduct of his father; but he saw how intense was 16 his agitation, and he did not follow him in his impulsive flights across the deck.

Though his father had always treated him with great consideration, and seldom if ever had occasion to exercise any of his paternal authority over him, the young man never took advantage of the familiarity existing between them. His father was certainly in a most extraordinary mood for him, and he could not venture to speak a word to him.

He stood near the companion way, not far from his mother, and he observed the movements of his father with the utmost interest, not unmingled with anxiety; and Mrs. Passford fully shared with him the solicitude of the moment.

The steamer was going at full speed in the direction of Sandy Hook. Captain Passford gave no heed to the movement of the vessel, but for several minutes planked the deck as though he were unable to realize the truth or the force of the news he had hastily gathered from the head-lines of the newspaper.

At last he halted in the waist, at some distance from the other members of his family, raised his paper, and fixed his gaze upon the staring 17 announcement at the head of one of its columns. No one ventured to approach him; for he was the magnate of the vessel, and, whatever his humor, he was entitled to the full benefit of it.

He only glanced at the head-lines as he had done before, and then dropped the paper, as though the announcement he had read was all he desired to know.

"Beeks," said he, as a quartermaster passed near him.

The man addressed promptly halted, raised his hand to his cap, and waited the pleasure of the owner of the steamer.

"Tell Captain Breaker that I wish to see him, if you please," added Captain Passford.

The man repeated the name of the person he was to call, and hastened away to obey the order. The owner resumed his march across the deck, though it was evident to the anxious observers that he had in a great measure recovered his self-possession, for his movements were less nervous, and the usual placid calm was restored to his face.

In another minute, Captain Breaker, who was the actual commander of the vessel, appeared in the waist, and walked up to his owner. 18 Though not more than forty-five years old, his hair and full beard were heavily tinted with gray; and an artist who wished for an ideal shipmaster, who was both a gentleman and a sailor, could not have found a better representative of this type in the merchant or naval service, or on the deck of the finest steam-yacht in the world.

"You sent for me, Captain Passford," said the commander, in respectful but not subservient tones.

"You will take the steamer to some point off Fire Island, and come to anchor there," replied the owner, as, without any explanation, he walked away from the spot.

"Off Fire Island," added Captain Breaker, simply repeating the name of the locality to which his order related, but not in a tone that required an exclamation-point to express his surprise.

Whatever the captain of the Bellevite thought or felt, it was an extraordinary order which he received. It was in the month of April, and the vessel had been absent about five months on her winter pleasure cruise.

In a few hours more the yacht could easily be at her moorings off Bonnydale on the Hudson; 19 but when almost in sight of New York, the captain had been ordered to anchor, as though the owner had no intention of returning to his elegant home.

If he was surprised, as doubtless he was, he did not manifest it in the slightest degree; for he was a sailor, and it was a part of his gospel to obey the orders of his owner without asking any questions.

No doubt he thought of his wife and children as he walked forward to the pilot-house to execute his order, for he had been away from them for a long time. The three papers brought on board by the pilot had all been given to the owner, and he had no hint of the startling news they contained.

The course of the Bellevite was promptly changed more to the northward; and if the pilot wished to be informed in regard to this strange alteration in the immediate destination of the vessel, Captain Breaker was unable to give him any explanation.

Captain Passford was evidently himself again; and he did not rush across the deck as he had done before, but seated himself in an armchair he 20 had occupied before the pilot came on board, and proceeded to read something more than the headlines in the paper.

He hardly moved or looked up for half an hour, so intensely was he absorbed in the narrative before him. Mrs. Passford and Christy, though even more excited by the singular conduct of the owner, and the change in the course of the steamer, did not venture to interrupt him.

The owner took the other two papers from his pocket, and had soon possessed himself of all the details of the astounding news; and it was plain enough to those who so eagerly observed his expression as he read, that he was impressed as he had never been before in his life.

Before the owner had finished the reading of the papers, the Bellevite had reached the anchorage chosen by the pilot, and the vessel was soon fast to the bottom in a quiet sea.

"The tide is just right for going up to the city," said the pilot, who had left his place in the pilot-house, and addressed himself to the owner in the waist.

"But we shall not go up to the city," replied Captain Passford, in a very decided tone. "But 21 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 22 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 23 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."

24 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 25 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, 26 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 existed; and each made occasional visits to the other, though the distance which separated them was too great to permit of very frequent exchanges personally of brotherly love and kindness.

Possibly the fraternal feeling which subsisted between the two brothers had some influence upon the opinions of Horatio, for to him hostilities meant making war upon his only brother, whom he cherished as warmly as if they had not been separated by a distance of over a thousand miles.

He measured the feelings of others by his own; and if all had felt as he felt, war would have been an impossibility, however critical and momentous the relations between the two sections.

Though his father had been born and bred in England, Horatio was more intensely American than thousands who came out of Plymouth Rock stock; and he believed in the union of the States, unable to believe that any true citizen 27 could tolerate the idea of a separation of any kind.

The first paper which Captain Passford read on the deck of the Bellevite contained the details of the bombardment and capture of Fort Sumter; and the others, a record of the events which had transpired in the few succeeding days after the news of actual war reached the North.

This terrible intelligence was unexpected to the owner of the yacht, believing, as he had, in the impossibility of war; and it seemed to him just as though he and his cherished brother were already arrayed against each other on the battle-field.

The commotion between the two sections had begun before his departure from home on the yacht cruise, but his brother, perhaps because he was fully instructed in regard to the Union sentiment of Horatio, was strangely reticent, and expressed no opinions of his own.

But Captain Passford, measuring his brother according