"David!" cried a voice stern and commanding, from a house-door one
morning, as the young man who owned the name was taking a short cut
"across lots" in the direction of Pautapoug.
"Sir!" cried the youth in response to the call, and pausing as nearly
as he could, and at the same time keep his feet from sinking into the
marshy soil.
"Where are you going?" was the response.
"To Pautapoug, to see Uriah Hayden, sir."
"You'd better hire out at ship-building with him. Your college
learning's of no earthly use in these days," said the father of David
Bushnell, returning from the door, and sinking slowly down into his
high-backed chair.
Then spoke up a sweet-voiced woman from the kitchen fire-side, where
she had that moment been hanging an iron pot on the crane:
"Have a little patience, father (Mrs. Bushnell always called her
husband, father), David is only looking about to see what to do. It's
hardly four weeks since he was graduated."
"True enough; but where can you find an idle man in all Saybrook
town? and you know as well as I do that it makes men despise
college-learning to see folks idle. I'd rather, for my part, David
_did_ go to work on the ship Uriah Hayden is building. I wish I
knew what he's gone over there for to-day."
A funny smile crept into the curves of Mrs. Bushnell's lips, but her
husband did not notice it.
Mr. Bushnell moved uneasily in his chair, as he sat leaning forward,
both hands clasped about a hickory stick, and his chin resting on the
knob at its top. Presently he said:
"Anna, I fear David is getting into bad habits. He used to talk a good
deal. Now he sits with his eyes on the floor, and his forehead in
wrinkles, and I'm _sure_ I've heard him moving about more than one
night lately, after all honest folks were in bed."
"Father, you must remember that you've been very sick, and fever gives
one queer notions sometimes. I shouldn't wonder one bit if you dreamed
you heard something, when 'twas only the rats behind the wainscot."
"Rats don't step like a grown man in his stocking-feet, nor make the
rafters creak, either."
Madam Bushnell appeared to be investigating the contents of the pot
hanging on the crane, and perhaps the heat of the blazing wood was
sufficient to account for the burning of her cheeks. She cooled them
a moment later by going down cellar after cider, a mug of which she
offered to her husband, proposing the while that he should have his
chair out of doors, and sit under the sycamore tree by the river-bank.
When he assented, and she had seen him safely in the chair, she made
haste to David's bed-room.
Since Mr. Bushnell's illness began, no one had ascended to the chamber
except herself and her son.
On two shelves hanging against the wall were the books that he had
brought home with him from Yale College, just four weeks ago.
A table was drawn near to the one window in the room. On it were bits
of wood, with iron scraps, fragments of glass and copper. In fact, the
same thing to-day would suggest boat-building to the mother of any lad
finding them among her boy's playthings. To this mother they suggested
nothing beyond the fact that David was engaged in something which he
wished to keep a profound secret.
He had not told her so. It had not been necessary. She had divined it
and kept silence, having all a mother's confidence in, and hope of,
her son's success in life.
As she surveyed the place, she thought:
"There is nothing here, even if he (meaning her husband) should take
it into his head to come up and look about."
Meanwhile young David had crossed the Pochaug River, and was half the
way to Pautapoug.
All this happened more than a thousand moons ago, when all the land
was aroused and astir, and David Bushnell was not in the least
surprised to meet, at the ship-yard of Uriah Hayden, Jonathan
Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut.
This man was everywhere, seeing to everything, in that year. Whatever
his country needed, or Commander-in-chief Washington ordered from the
camp at Cambridge, was forthcoming.
A ship had been demanded of Connecticut, and so Governor Trumbull had
come down from Lebanon to look with his own eyes at the huge ribs of
oak, thereafter to sail the seas as "The Oliver Cromwell."
The self-same oaken ribs had intense interest for young David
Bushnell. Uriah Hayden had promised to sell to him all the pieces of
ship-timber that should be left, and while the governor and the
builder planned, he went about gathering together fragments.
"Better take enough to build a boat that will carry a seine. 'T won't
cost you a mite more, and might serve you a good turn to have a
sizable craft in a heavy sea some day," said Mr. Hayden.
Now David Bushnell had been wishing that he had some good and
sufficient reason to give Mr. Hayden for wanting the stuff at all, and
here he had given it to him.
"That's true," spoke up David, "but how am I to get all this over to
Pochaug?"
"Don't get it over at all, until it's ready to row down the
Connecticut, and around the Sound. You're welcome to build your boat
at the yard, and, now and then, there will be odd minutes that the men
can help you on with it."
David thanked Mr. Hayden, grew cheerful of heart over the prospect of
owning a boat of his own, and went merrily back to the village of
Pochaug.
Two weeks later David's boat was ready for sea. It was launched into
the Connecticut from the ways on which the "Oliver Cromwell" grew, was
named Lady Fenwick, and, when water-tight, was rowed down the river,
past Saybrook and Tomb Hill, and so into the Long Island Sound.
When its owner and navigator went by Tomb Hill, he removed his hat,
and bowed reverently. He thought with respect and admiration of the
occupant of the sandstone tomb on its height, the Lady Fenwick who had
slept there one hundred and thirty years.
With blistered palms and burning fingers David Bushnell pushed his
boat with pride up the Pochaug River, and tied it to a stake at the
bridge just beyond the sycamore tree, near his father's door.
"I'll fetch father and mother out to see it," he thought, "when the
moon gets up a little higher."
With boyish pride he looked down at the work of his hands from the
river-bank, and went in to get his supper.
"David!" called Mr. Bushnell, having heard his steps in the
entry-way.
"Here I am, father," returned the young man, appearing within the
room, and speaking in a cheerful tone.
"Don't you think you have wasted about time enough?"
The voice was high-wrought and nervous in the extreme. He, poor man,
had been that afternoon thinking the matter over in a convalescent's
weak manner of looking upon the act of another man.
David Bushnell, smiling still, and taking out a large silver watch
from his waistcoat pocket, and looking at it, replied:
"I haven't wasted one moment, father. The tide was against me, but
I've rowed around from Pautapoug ship-yard to the sycamore tree out
here since two o'clock."
"_You_ row a boat!" cried Mr. Bushnell, with lofty disdain.
"Why, father, you have not a very good opinion of your son, have you?"
questioned the son. "Come, though, and see what he has been doing.
Come, mother," as Mrs. Bushnell entered, bearing David's supper in her
hands.
She put it down. Mr. Bushnell pulled himself upright with a groan or
two, and suffered David to assist him by the support of his arm as
they went out.
"Why, you tremble as though you had the palsy," said the father.
"It's nothing. I'm not used to pulling so long at the oar," said the
son.
When they came to the bank, the full moon shone athwart the little
boat rocking on the stream.
"What's that?" exclaimed both parents.
"That is the Lady Fenwick. I've been building the boat myself. You
advised me, father, to go to ship-building one morning--do you
remember? I took your advice, and began at the bottom of the ladder."
"_You_ built that boat with your own hands, you say?"
"With my own hands, sir."
"In two weeks' time?"
"Yes, sir."
"And rowed it all the way down the river, and up the Pochaug?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good boy! You may go in and have your supper," said Mr. Bushnell,
patting him on the back, just as he had done when he returned from
college with his first award.
As for Madam Bushnell, she smiled down upon Lady Fenwick and did her
great reverence in her heart, while she said to the boat-builder:
"David, dear, wait a few minutes, and I'll give you something nice
and warm for your supper. Your father, Ezra and I had ours long ago."
That night Mr. Bushnell did not lie awake to listen for the stealthy
stepping in the upper room. He slept all the sounder, because he had
at last seen one stroke of honest work, as he called it, as the result
of his endeavors to help David on in life.
As for David himself, he went to sleep, saying in his heart: "It is a
good stepping-stone at least;" which conclusion grew into form in
sleep, and shaped itself into a mighty monster, that bored itself
under mountains, and, after taking a nap, roused and shook itself so
mightily that the mountain flew into fragments high in air.
If you go, to-day, into the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound,
you will see on its left bank the old town of Saybrook, on its right
the slightly younger town of Lyme, and you will have passed by,
without having been very much interested in it, an island lying just
within the shelter of either bank.
In the summer of 1774 a band of fishermen put up a reel upon the
island, on which to wind their seine. Over the reel they built a roof
to protect it from the rains. With the exception of the reel, there
was no building upon the island. A large portion of the land was
submerged at the highest tides, and in the spring freshets, and was
covered with a generous growth of salt grass, in which a small army
might readily find concealment.
The little fishing band was now sadly broken and lessened by one of
the Washingtonian demands upon Brother Jonathan. For reasons that he
did not choose to give, David Bushnell joined this band of fishermen
in the summer of 1775. Gradually he made himself, by purchase, the
owner of the larger part of the reel and seine. In a few weeks' time
he had induced his brother Ezra to become as much of a fisherman as he
himself was.
As the days went by, the brothers fairly haunted this island. They
gave it a name for their own use, and, early in the day-dawn of many a
morning, they pulled the Lady Fenwick wearily up the Pochaug, to
snatch a few winks of sleep at home, before the sun should fairly rise
and call them to their daily tasks, for David assumed to help Ezra on
the farm, even as Ezra helped him on the island.
The two brothers owned the reel and the seine before the end of the
month of August in 1775. As soon as they became the sole owners, they
procured lumber and enclosed the reel, and very seldom took down the
seine from its great round perch; they used it just often enough to
allay any suspicion as to their real object in becoming owners of the
fishing implements.
About that time a story grew into general belief that the tomb of Lady
Fenwick was haunted. Boatmen, passing in the stillness of the solemn
night hours, asserted that they heard strange noises issuing from the
hill, just where the lady slept in her lonely burial-place. The sounds
seemed to emerge from the earth, and timid men passed up the river
with every inch of sail set to catch the breeze, lest the solemn thud
should sound, that a hundred persons were willing to testify had been
heard by each and every one of them, at some hour of the night, coming
from the tomb.
One evening in late September, the two brothers started forth as
usual, nominally to "go fishing." As they stepped down the bank, Mr.
Bushnell followed them.
"Boys," said he, "it's an uncommon fine night on the water. I believe
I'll take a seat in your boat, with your permission. I used to like
fishing myself when I was young and spry."
"And leave mother alone!" objected David.
"She's been out with me many a night on the Sound. She's brave, and
won't mind a good south-west wind, such as I dare say breaks in on the
shore this minute. Go and call her."
And so the family started forth to go fishing.
This was a night the two brothers had been looking forward to during
weeks of earnest labor, and now--well, it could not be helped, and
there was not a moment in which to hold counsel.
Mr. Bushnell had planned this surprise early in the day, but had not
told his wife until evening. Then he announced his determination to
"learn what all these midnight and all-night absences did mean."
As the Lady Fenwick came out from the Pochaug River into the Sound,
the south-west wind brought crested waves to shore. The wind was
increasing, and, to the great relief of David and Ezra, Mr. Bushnell
gave the order to turn back into the river.
The next day David Bushnell asked his mother whether or not she knew
the reason his father had proposed to go out with them the night
before.
"Yes, David," was the reply, "I do."
"Will you tell me?"
"He does not believe that you and Ezra go fishing at all."
"What do you believe about it, mother?"
"I believe in _you_, David, and that when you have anything to tell to
me, I shall be glad to listen."
"And father does not trust me yet; I am sorry," said David, turning
away. And then, as by a sudden impulse, he returned and said:
"If you can trust _me_ so entirely, mother, _we_ can trust _you_.
To-day, two gentlemen will be here. You will please be ready to go out
in the boat with us whenever they come."
"Where to?"
"To my fishing ground, mother."
The strangers arrived, and were presented to Mrs. Bushnell as Dr. Gale
and his friend, Mr. Franklin.
At three of the clock the little family set off in the row-boat. Down
at Pochaug harbor, there was Mr. Bushnell hallooing to them to be
taken on board.
"I saw my family starting on an unknown voyage," he remarked, as the
boat approached the shore as nearly as it could, while he waded out to
meet it.
"Ah, Friend Gale, is that you?" he said, as with dripping feet he
stepped in. "And whither bound?" he added, dropping into a seat.
"For the far and distant land of the unknown, Mr. Bushnell. Permit me
to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Franklin."
"Franklin! Franklin!" exclaimed Mr. Bushnell, eyeing the stranger a
little rudely. "_Doctor Benjamin Franklin_, _if you please_, Benjamin
Gale!" he corrected, to the utter amazement of the party.
The oars missed the stroke, caught it again, and, for a minute, poor
Dr. Franklin was confused by the sudden announcement that he existed
at all, and, in particular, in that small boat on the sea.
"Yes, sir, even so," responded Dr. Gale, cheerfully adding, "and we're
going down to see the new fishing tackle your son is going to catch
the enemy's ships with."
"Fishing tackle! Enemy's ships! Why, David _is_ the laziest man in all
Saybrook town. He does nothing with his first summer but fish, fish
all night long! The only stroke of honest work I've _ever_ known him
to do was to build this boat we're in."
During this time the brothers were pulling with a will for the
island.
Arrived there, the boat was drawn up on the sand, the seine-house
unlocked, and, when the light of day had been let into it, fishing-reel
and seine had disappeared, and, in the language of Doctor Benjamin Gale,
this is what they found therein: