“Why,” said Allen, who is Norton’s best-beloved friend, “they say that you ran away from them as fast as they did from you.”

“Do they?” said Norton, grimly.  “If you say that, I’ll break your head for you.  Seriously, men,” continued he, “that was a most extraordinary thing.  You know I was on the ram.  But why she stopped when she stopped I knew as little as this wineglass does; and Callender himself knew no more than I. We had not been hit.  We were all right as a trivet for all we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead, and began to drift down under those batteries.  Callender had to telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat, and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape.  Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not have done better.  Of course we all rushed to the engine-room.  What in thunder were they at there?  All they knew was they could get no water into her boiler.

“Now, fellows, this is the end of the story.  As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps.  May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman’s crinoline.  And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can’t tell when we shall have such a chance again!”

Some of the men thought Norton lied.  But I never was with him when he did not tell the truth.  I did not mention, however, what I had thrown into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester.  And I changed my mind about Sarah’s “secret-service” parcel.  It remained on my table.

That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe.  The spring came on, and the plot thickened.  We did our work in the office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other people—­but no matter for that!  The 3d of April came, and the fire, and the right wing of Grant’s army.  I remember I was glad then that I had moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there.  Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days.  I improved those days as well as I could,—­burning carefully what was to be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden.  One thing that happened then belongs to this story.  As I was at work on the private bureau,—­it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt Eunice give up when I broke my leg,—­I came, to my horror, on a neat parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.  They were not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they were like them.  Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use them, if necessary, in his escape.  When I found them, I hopped out and called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for them.  “Certainly,” she said, “it was the first I knew of the danger.  Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up, walked in, and in a moment was gone.”