The Blockade Runner — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

14 _ THE BLOCKADE RUNNER. He was a youne man named Robert Bentham, an American by birth, and a person who seemed to know a good deal about ship gunnery. Indeed, he had been educated at one of the best naval schools in France, and was on his way to take part in the terrible conflict raging between the two sections of the Union. On which side ¢ Why ask the question, when we find him a pas- senger on board a Confederate blockade runner, and almost in port $ If his sympathies were with the Union, why did he not take passage in a vessel bound for New York? Let the future pages of our romance solve these questions. For some time the Foxhound kept steadily on her course, breasting the terrible waves with her cutting prow, and guided all the time by the sailor at the wheel. Captain Powell knew that the storm had beaten the Federal blockaders off the coast. But his experience also taught him that the gun- beats kept a particularly argus-eyed watch on such nights as this, as it offered a favorable chance for the low-lying lead-painted blockade runners to elude the squadron. In spite of the Senn he had made to his pas- senger of a safe and speedy run, be was fully alive to the dangers that beset him as he drew in near the shore. He could not tell what moment he might run foul of a gunboat. He knew the crews were kept ready at their stations COMME DOOKS (C@