It was on Sunday morning that somebody told Lieutenant Maynard about the coasting captain and his news, and he lost no time in coming to speech with the man. He took him directly to Mr. Chorley’s house, where Colonel Parker was still staying. Mr. Chorley and Mr. Chancellor Page and Dr. Young were all present when Captain Niles told his story to Colonel Parker. “It must be Nelly!” cried out the poor bereaved father. “It can be no one else than she!”
“I would not build too much upon such a rumor,” said Mr. Chorley. “Nevertheless, it does seem as though, at last, you have really news of her. And now the question is, how do you propose to act? ‘Twill never do to be too hasty in such a delicate matter.”
But Colonel Parker was so eager to set sail at once in quest of his daughter that he would listen to nothing that his friends advised to the contrary. Mr. Chorley urged again and again that the utmost caution should be used lest the pirates should carry the young lady still further away from rescue, or maybe take some violent action to protect themselves. He suggested that Governor Eden be written to and requested to take the matter in hand. “Write to Governor Eden!” Colonel Parker cried out; “why should I write to Eden? Why suffer so much delay? Have I not boats fitted out and sufficiently armed and manned with brave fellows to face all the pirates of North Carolina if need be? Nay; I will go down thither and inquire into this report myself without losing time, and without asking Governor Eden to do it for me.”
This, as was said, was on Sunday morning, and Colonel Parker determined that the expedition should set sail for North Carolina early upon the morning of the following day.
It was on this same day that the news was first brought to Virginia of the loss of the French bark. One of Colonel Parker’s two boats—the sloop, which was at that time under command of an ex-man-of-war boatswain, known at Norfolk as “Captain” Blume—one of Colonel Parker’s two boats had been beating up and down the mouth of the bay for several days past, hailing incoming or outgoing vessels in the hope of obtaining some news concerning the young lady. It was about ten o’clock that Sunday morning, when the lookout in the foretop of the schooner sighted an open boat under a scrap of sail, beating up into the bay against the wind. By and by they could make out with the glass that there were men in the boat waving their hats and something white, apparently a shirt or a shift, at the end of an oar. When the sloop ran down to the boat they found it loaded with twenty men and two women; one of the women very weak and exhausted from exposure, all of them haggard and famished.