"I don't know that we want to avoid them, for I should like very much to know who and what they are. They must be tipsy to a greater or less degree by this time, for they do twice as much drinking as eating,"

answered Christy, as he advanced a little way farther up the hill. "They have a basket of food, and I do not believe they are mere tramps. They are more likely to be engaged in some occupation which brought them to this point, and I think we had better fraternize with them. They may be able to give us some valuable information; and it looks as though they were drunk enough to tell all they know without making any difficulty about it."

"Do you think it is quite prudent, Mr. Pa.s.sford, to approach them?"

asked the engineer.

"When we come on an excursion of this kind we have to take some risk.

If I were alone I should not hesitate to join them, and take my chances, for they must know something about affairs in this vicinity," replied Christy in a quiet tone, so that his answer might not be interpreted as a boast or a reproach to his companion.

"I am ready to follow you, Mr. Pa.s.sford, wherever you go, and to depend upon your judgment for guidance," said Graines very promptly. "If it comes to a fight with those fellows, I beg you to understand that I will do my full share of it, and obey your orders to the letter."

"Of course I have no doubt whatever in regard to your courage and your readiness to do your whole duty, Mr. Graines," added Christy, as he led the way to the summit of the elevation. "Now lay aside your grammar and rhetoric, and we must be as good fellows as those bivouackers are making themselves. We are simply sailors who have just escaped from a captured blockade-runner."

"I don't see anything around the fire that looks like muskets," said the engineer, as they descended from the elevation.

"I see nothing at all except the provision-basket and the bottles,"

replied Christy.

"But they may be armed for all that."

"We must take our chances. They are so busy eating and drinking that they have not seen us yet. Perhaps we had better be a little hilarious,"

continued the lieutenant, as he began to sing, "We won't go home till morning," in which he was joined by his companion as vigorously as the circ.u.mstances would permit.

Singing as they went, and with a rolling gait, they approached the revellers.

CHAPTER IV

THE REVELATIONS OF THE REVELLERS

"'We won't go home till morning,'" sang the two counterfeit revellers, as they approached the fire of the bivouackers.

The four carousel's sprang to their feet when the first strain reached their ears. They were not as intoxicated as they might have been, for they were able to stand with considerable firmness on their feet, after the frequency with which the bottle had been pa.s.sed among them. They did not do what soldiers would naturally have done at such an interruption, grasp their muskets, and it was probable they had no muskets to grasp.

"'We won't go home till morning, till daylight doth appear,'" continued the two officers, without halting in their march towards the revellers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The two counterfeit revellers." Page 48.]

No weapons of any kind were exhibited; but the tipplers stood as though transfixed with astonishment or alarm where they had risen, but were rather limp in their att.i.tude. They evidently did not know what to make of the interruption, and they appeared to be waiting for further developments on the part of the intruders.

"It isn't mornin' yit, but we just emptied our bottle," said Christy, with a swaggering and slightly reeling movement, and suiting his speech to the occasion. "How are ye, shipmates?"

"Up to G, jolly tars," replied one of the men, with a broad grin on his face. "We done got two full bottles left, at your sarvice."

"Much obleeged," returned the lieutenant, as he took the bottle the reveller pa.s.sed to him. "Here's success to us all in a heap, and success to our side in the battle that's go'n' on."

"I'm with you up to the armpits," added Graines, as another of the four handed him a bottle.

One sniff at the neck of the bottle was enough to satisfy Christy, who was a practical temperance man of the very strictest kind, and he had never drank a gla.s.s of anything intoxicating in all his life. The bottle contained "apple-jack," or apple-brandy, the vilest fluid that ever pa.s.sed a tippler's gullet. He felt obliged to keep up his character, taken for the occasion, and he retained the mouth of the bottle at his lips long enough to answer the requirement of the moment; but he did not open them, or permit a drop of the nauseous and fiery liquor to pollute his tongue. It was necessary for him to consider that he was struggling for the salvation of his beloved country to enable him even to go through the form of "taking a drink."

Graines was less scrupulous on the question of temperance, and he took a swallow of the apple-jack; but that was enough for him, for he had never tasted anything outside of the medicine-chest which was half as noxious.

If he had been compelled to keep up the drinking, he would have realized that his punishment was more than he could bear. Fortunately the tipplers had no tumblers, so that the guests were not compelled to pour out the fluid and drink it off. All drank directly from the bottles, so that the two officers could easily conceal in the semi-darkness the extent of their indulgence.

"Who be you, strangers?" asked the man who had acted thus far as spokesman of the party.

"My name is Tom Bulger, born and brought up in the island of Great Abaco, and this feller is my friend and shipmate, Sam Riley," replied Christy, twisting and torturing his speech as much as was necessary.

"Now who be you fellers?"

"Born and fetched up in Mobile: my name is Bird Riley; and I reckon t'other feller is a first cousin of mine, for he's got the same name, and he's almost as handsome as I am. Where was you born, Sam?"

"About ten miles up the Alabama, where my father was the overseer on a plantation before the war," replied Graines as promptly as though he had been telling the truth.

"Then you must be one of my cousins, for I done got about two hundred and fifty on 'em in the State of Alabammy. Give us your fin, Sam."

Bird Riley and Sam shook hands in due and proper form, and the relationship appeared to be fully established. The names of the three other revellers were given, but the spokesman was disposed to do all the talking, though he occasionally appealed to his companions to approve of what he said. It was evident that he was the leading spirit of the party, and that he controlled them. He was rather a bright fellow, while the others were somewhat heavy and stupid in their understanding. The bottles were again handed to the guests, both of whom went through the form of drinking without taking a drop of the vile stuff.

"What be you uns doin' here?" asked Bird Riley, after the ceremony with the bottle had been finished.

"We was both tooken in a schooner that was gwine to run the blockade,"

answered Christy. "We was comin' out'n Pa.s.s Christian, and was picked up off Chand'leer [Chandeleur] Island, and fotched over hyer. We didn't feel too much to hum after we lost our wages, and we done took a whaleboat and came ash.o.r.e here, with only one bottle of whiskey atween us. That's all there is on't. Now, how comes you uns hyer?"

"I'm the mate of the topsail schooner West Wind, and t'others is the crew; all but two we done left on board with the cap'n," replied Bird, apparently with abundant confidence in his newly found friends.

"You left her?" asked Christy.

"That's just what we done do."

"Where is the West Wind now?" inquired Christy, deeply interested in the subject at this point.

"She done come down from Mobile three days ago, and done waited for a chance to run the blockade. Her hole is full o' cotton, and she done got a deck-load too," answered Bird Riley without any hesitation.

"Where does the West Wind keep herself now, Bird?"

"Just inside the p'int, astern of the Trafladagar."

"The Trafladagar?" repeated Christy.

"That's her name, or sunthin like it. I never see it writ out."

"She's a schooner, I reckon," continued Christy, concealing what knowledge he possessed in regard to the vessel.

"She ain't no schooner, you bet; she's jest the finist steamer that ever runned inter Mobile, and they've turned her into a cruiser," Bird Riley explained.

"How big is she?"

"I heerd some un say she was about eight hun'ed tons: an' I'll bet she'll pick up every Yankee craft that she gits a sight on."