Arundel (24 page)

“How much of an interest,” I asked, “would you consider fitten and proper for yourself, in case I talked to my ma and we decided maybe this could be done?”

“Oh, Steven,” she said, and she stood there in front of me with her fists clenched so tight that I feared she might tear herself to pieces in case I crossed her wishes, “I don’t care! Give me what’s right. I’ll do it for anything!”

“Would you do it for a tenth?” I asked, wanting to be sure she meant what she said.

“Oh, Stevie!” she said with a sort of gasp, “you’ll do it!” She had a look as if she might hang around my neck and cry, so I went in to see my mother. The upshot was that we gave Phoebe a fifth interest in the sloop, which was a square trade for both of us, in case she fancied herself with good cause. That night my mother and I talked with Thomas Scammen in the kitchen about the building of it. Phoebe, my mother said, should have a word in the matter; but it was more of a sermon she had than a word.

She had ideas aplenty, claiming it ought to be sharp like a knife instead of round like a tub, and deep, so to let her crack on canvas. She had ideas about the cabin, vowing she had never had comfort anywhere, and was now going to have it, since there was every reason why a sloop’s cabin should be richer in comfort than any room on land. Scammen snorted at these ideas, and Phoebe grew outrageous, wagging her finger in his face and telling him how he had built vessels all his life the way every other damned fool built them, and never thought of the whys and wherefores of what he did, only
whooshed
like a frightened buck when somebody wanted to build a craft more sensible than any he’d ever laid adze to.

What Phoebe asked for and what we agreed on was a sloop of one hundred and twenty tons or thereabout, of fifty-eight foot keel, twenty-two foot beam, and eleven foot hull, built with all white oak above water and all good oak below water, the outboard plank not under two and one-half inches thick, and the mast and bowsprit good white pine of such dimensions as Phoebe Marvin might direct. For this we agreed to pay Thomas Scammen two pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence for each and every ton that she should ton when built, one fifth in cash, one quarter in West India goods, and the remainder in English goods or provisions as desired, New England rum to be two shillings a gallon, molasses one shilling eightpence a gallon, cotton wool one shilling eightpence a pound, coffee one shilling fourpence a pound, chocolate one shilling sixpence a pound, pork four pounds ten shillings eightpence a barrel, and codfish seventeen shillings a quintal.

Little good it did poor Scammen to waggle his head and moan that no man had ever seen the like of the rising generation for wildness and cussedness; for Phoebe was at his shipyard the next morning, and there she stayed until the sloop was finished, peering at every knee and plank and pin that went into the hull, and whizzing around the blocks like a squirrel to watch each adze stroke, screaming at Scammen like a demoniac when displeased.

She was better off out of the house; for from the day when the Sons of Liberty were born the scenes in our gathering-room of nights took on the air of feeding time in a den of foxes, and any woman who went into it was like to be pounded to pieces; not from deviltry, but from the waving fists with which the Sons, in their excitement, emphasized their determination to be freed from slavery.

Our people fell into a veritable frenzy over the Stamp Tax and the English. Whatever happened to a man during this time—a bad harvest, say, or a torn coat or a foot cut on a clamshell, or anything at all—was blamed by our Sons of Liberty on the English and the Stamp Tax. Yet this frenzy, travelers said, was no different from that into which the people to the south of us had fallen, all the way to Boston and through Rhode Island and Connecticut and beyond.

Such was their frenzy that they were no longer content to fulminate over their rum, but must set forth in mobs to visit their wrath on officers of the crown or any man who held views opposed to their own. First there would come word from Portsmouth that the Sons of Liberty had seized on a wealthy shipowner who counseled moderation, and stuffed him into a hogshead full of ancient fish. Then there would be advices from Boston that a mob of wild men had pillaged and wrecked the grand mansion of Chief Justice Hutchinson. Then, in another month or so, there would be news from Connecticut that the stamp distributor had been whipped in effigy by the Sons of Liberty and hanged to a gallows fifty feet high. Still a little later we learned from New Haven that our friend Benedict Arnold, having discovered a man to be an informer concerning smuggled goods, had stripped him naked with his own hands, tied him to the whipping post, and given him forty lashes, while the Sons of Liberty looked on and howled for joy.

Despite these tumults, I continued to inquire of trappers and traders concerning Guerlac, thinking the unrest would soon be at an end, so I could leave my mother and sisters to conduct the affairs of the inn while I went off on my own business. Yet there was no word of him, nor was there any lessening of the riots and disorder, even though the Stamp Act was repealed while I was still in my nineteenth year.

Indeed, the unrest grew worse; for those Sons of Liberty who were without work and money—which most of them were, since they were the poorest and least responsible of our people—began to attack the homes of wealthy men for no other reason than to take possession of their belongings. Thus other wealthy men, fearing for their own persons and possessions, raised a rumpus against the Sons of Liberty, so that they were made stronger and more violent by opposition.

On top of everything, in my twentieth year, the King’s customs officers in Boston were such fools as to think they could begin to enforce duties which they had never before enforced, having theretofore been content to take bribes. With that the mobs went rampaging through the town, beating customs officers, helping shipowners to land cargoes, wrecking the houses of the King’s sympathizers, threatening those they misliked with tar and feathers, and even defying the courts and the governor of Massachusetts.

Now the Sons of Liberty had set up committees of correspondence in all the different towns, and the committee in every town would write to Sam Adams in Boston, telling him what was happening; and Sam Adams would write to the committees of correspondence in the towns, informing them of all important circumstances.

It was a cool September night, that year, when James Dunn stood up in our gathering-room and said he had a matter of interest to lay before the people. On account of the coolness, a greater number than usual had come to warm themselves with a dram. Some of them were folk who had shown no friendship toward the Sons of Liberty, though they, like myself, had taken care to say nothing against them lest they have their barns burned and their cattle scattered in the woods. All of them fell silent before the solemn, sagacious face of vacant-headed James, and he then read a letter from Sam Adams. It said the English government, on the grounds of rescuing the government of Massachusetts from the hands of a trained mob, would shortly send a regiment from Halifax and two regiments from Ireland into Boston to enforce order. Believing, said the letter, that the colonists would prefer to put their lives in their hands and cry to the Judge of all the earth rather than to be the slaves of England, it urged all well-disposed colonists to provide themselves with firearms.

Having read this letter, James Dunn sat down without further comment, which indeed he was incapable of making; and I might here add that this sort of incapacity of his was of great value in giving him his reputation for wisdom; as whenever he could find nothing to say, people were impressed with the idea that he was engaged in powerful thoughts. The other Sons of Liberty remained silent as well, staring into their tumblers, but looking as though their ears were athrob to hear how the rest of us would take it.

Now God knows I had been a peaceable citizen, deploring the violence of the Sons of Liberty; but when I heard these words out of James Dunn I knew no fat King in England could throw me an order and then send troops to jam the order down my throat, not so long as decent men like Sam Adams and John Hancock and Benedict Arnold said there was no need to obey the order. Therefore I stood up and said I was provided with enough firearms to stand off our share of English troops, and would undertake to furnish the residents of Arundel with muskets, powder, and bullet molds at their exact cost, and show them my books into the bargain so they could not accuse me of growing rich out of them, which they otherwise would be sure to do. Such a wild hurroaring and hurrooing arose at this that it cost me a small keg of French rum; and the very next day I despatched Phoebe in her sloop to Portsmouth for additional muskets, powder, and lead.

It had been a stroke of fortune for my mother and myself when we made Phoebe the master of the sloop
Eunice
—a name Phoebe had bespoke on the day her keel was laid. From the look in her eye I suspected she wished this name so that I would not call it the “Mary M.,” which I would not have done, though I had given some thought to calling it the “White Lily,” but decided against it for fear of what Cap Huff would say in case he saw it.

Knowing how pestilential she could be if crossed, I agreed to the name Eunice, whereat she set Thomas Scammen to work carving a seal’s head for a bow ornament. This head she herself decorated with whiskers, having me make nails at my forge so she could drive them into the side of the nose, causing the head to appear to pout and bristle, very realistic, like Eunice imploring me for fish.

She carried two hands on the sloop, selecting always the stupidest men she could find; for she said she wanted a crew that would take orders without knowing enough to try to think for her because she was a female, or to be afraid. Thus she got her men cheap; though after she had taken me out in a brisk southwesterly breeze and run me so close to the ledges, dodging in and out among them, that they would have rubbed off my finger nails had I thrust my hand over the lee-gunnel, it was in my mind that her crew would need to be wholly witless to sail under her for any amount of pay at all.

She carried our lumber and fish to Boston as fast as they could be carried, and faster than most folk said was possible. There she exchanged them for such goods as I needed in the inn, trading discreetly, and holding the high respect of those with whom she traded, even though she persisted in wearing sea boots like a man. She might, indeed, have been mistaken for a small-waisted boy save for the East India chains and necklets she was forever wearing, in especial a string of stones called cat’s eyes that she had from an East India sailor in trade for two stone hatchets and a magnifying glass which she had swapped for a gray parrot from God knows where.

The sloop’s business, however, was Phoebe’s and my mother’s. The inn kept me busy—far busier than I wished; for if ever I wanted to be an orphan child with no responsibilities to weigh me down, it was on the second occasion that Benedict Arnold’s path crossed mine.

I had been off around Cape Arundel in my flat-bottomed skiff to cut ash poles, in the spring of my twenty-second year. On returning up the river and into the creek with the rising tide, I saw a crowd of people—my mother and sisters and James Dunn and several others—standing near our front door. As I watched, a man among them made a short run and took two steps up the sheer side of the house, so that he was above their heads; then threw himself backward in a somersault, landing neatly on his feet. Instantly there flashed into my mind the memory of a man in a white blanket coat going hand over hand up a rope as easily as I could walk up a staircase; and I knew I was looking at Arnold once more.

I shouted and ran up, happy to see him, and found those about him entranced by the tricks of skill he had been performing. Even while he greeted me my sisters clamored for him to do a feat he had done for them. Nothing loath, he went to the cart on which we dragged our whale boat from the creek to the beach at low water, measured the height of the wheel with his outstretched hand; then backed away, ran lightly at it, and vaulted completely over without touching hand or foot to either wheel. Never have I seen another man who could do this, though many tried it in after years, especially when elevated by rum, and narrowly escaped breaking their necks.

Though I could see he took pleasure in the amazed head-wagging of those who watched him, as who would not, he beckoned James Dunn to give him his broadcloth coat and three-cornered hat, donned them, and clapped me on the shoulders, saying he had come from Cape Porpus to see me. As soon as we were by ourselves in the inn, he flipped the back of his fingers against my chest, lengthened his face in the smile I well remembered, and shot at me abruptly: “I’ve seen your girl!”