"Don't give up the ship!"

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1. The Search oh the Jennie B 1

26. I Was There 304

CHAPTER I. The Search on the Jennie B

I T was a beautiful morning in July, 1807, near the end of the month. A stiff breeze was blowing off the sound, and the air was cool and salty, and down by Brant Point the tide was racing swiftly into Nantucket harbor. Along the shore of the outer bay, instead of the usual gentle lapping of the waves on the beach, a surf was pounding, and the water was slimy with seaweed which had been torn from its bed, and was now being tossed in long windrows high up on the beach. From the south shore three miles away came the heavy roar of the surf, as the great wall of water fell incessantly on the beach.

These were the only signs here of the great gale, which had swept the coast of New England. But its destructive force was hurled in vain along a coast, where but little shipping was afloat. A few years before wrecks of coasters and foreign ships would have been strewn along the sea front from Eastport to New York. Now the vessels were rotting idly at the piers in safe harbors, and the ocean was nearly as bare of sails as it was when Columbus ventured his little fleet on the virgin waters of the Western World.

Why and how this great shipping business had been destroyed will be seen as this little story unfolds.

Harry Macy was sitting on the high steps in front of a large house which faced the bay. It was such a house as may be seen there today, a house built of the old oaks which once grew upon the island, and its sides were covered with weather-stained shingles. A great square chimney rose above the roof in the center, and along the ridge extended a wide railed platform, called “the walk." At one end was a ten foot pole with a black weather-vane, shaped like a whale, which pointed over the outer bay to the north.

Harry was a sturdy boy, twelve years old, bright in mind and strong of body, just such a boy as you would like for a chum, if you were spending a summer by the sea. He could do with ease many of the things, which boys, who live away from the water, long to do. He could pull an oar in a heavy fishing dory, or sail a cat-boat, even when the sea was high, and the boat slipped along through the white caps,

“With a wet sheet and a flowing sea,

And a wind that followed after."

Harry could swim across the harbor and back again, and he knew how to throw and haul his line through the breakers to catch blue fish or cod. He had even caught a shark, a man-eater or blue dog, and carried some of its teeth in his pocket for good luck.

Of course, being a Nantucket boy, his great ambi-

The Search on the Jennie B.

tion was to go on a whaling voyage. But no whalers went out any more, and there were no ships in the harbor, and even the schooners and sloops in the coasting trade had all gone to safer harbors, or had been captured, or destroyed. It was of this Harry was thinking this morning, instead of running about with his companions in his usual lively way. Behind him he could hear his mother having a morning chat with her neighbor, Mrs. Gardner, and in the yard he saw his brothers and sisters in their old clothes and barefooted, playing their childish games. His trousers were darned and patched, and his shirt was an old one of his father's made over to fit him, and now much worse for its hard usage.

“Where's your shipmate, Harry? Who are you talking to?"

Harry turned and there was his dory-mate, Ike Coffin, whose bare feet made no noise in the grassy lane.

“Was I talking? I must have been thinking out loud. I wish we were shipmates on a whaler, or a merchant-man bound for Havana. I’m tired of doing nothing. I want to work and earn money to help mother, and to buy me some new clothes this fall. What am I going to do when school begins, or where will we get money to pay the teacher?"

“Well, then you will get out of going," said Ike, who was always in difficulties with the teachers, and happy when school terms were over.

“I want to go to school when I can’t go to sea. If I can’t be a sailor, I will be a business man. I’m going to be at the head of something, but I’d rather be a captain aboard a clipper.”

“Didn’t you get wool this spring?”

“Not enough to make the cloth we need. You remember when shearing day came we couldn’t find all our sheep. Some of them died on the commons last winter, and our clip was a small one. When mother carded and spun it, there wasn’t yarn enough to make much cloth.”

“Mebbe your sheep didn’t die. The brand might have been changed.”

“What do you mean, Ike? That couldn’t be? There’s nobody on the island would do such a mean trick on mother.”

“Don’t be too sure. That man Mooney is getting rich pretty fast. He’s mean enough to steal the lobsters out of old Daddy Swayne’s pots. He had more sheep than his share on the commons last spring, and Levi told him they wouldn’t allow him to keep so many this year. Some of them couldn’t understand how his flock got so big in two years.”

“Do the s’lectmen think he changed mother’s brand to his?”

The Search on the Jennie B.

“They didn’t say so. They looked at his brands pretty close.”

“I’ll ask Levi about it. Come on now.”

“No. Lets go down to Matt Swazey’s shop. He’s going up to Wanwinet after dinner, and if he will let us go along we may get some blue fish.”

“I want to ask Levi about the sheep.”

“You can see him when we come back.”

“I’m going to Levi’s now. That’s too mean a trick to stand, and I want to know all about it.”

“Don’t get mad about it now, Harry. They couldn’t be sure about it, or they would have told your mother at the time, so she could make her complaint to the s’lectmen.”

“Moony’s a stranger. Do they know anything about him?”

“He’s an Englishman.”

“Another British oppressor to rob us of our property and rights. They think the ocean is an English pond, and that nobody can sail a boat on it without asking leave of them.”

“My father says Napoleon is the real cause of our troubles with England. He wants to be king of all Europe, and England won’t let him have it. So he is fighting England, and when he captures England and gets all her ships, then he will sweep all our ships off the oceans, and tell us just what we can do.”

“Your father is a federalist and they all hate France, and say Jefferson is an ally of France.”

“There’s a lot of good sense in what he says. He don’t stand up for England, but he thinks we ought not to go to war. He says the President is right in trying to avoid a war.”

“The people are angry enough to go to war. Think of what happened last year when the Leander fired on the sloop, Richard, at New York and killed the helmsman, Pierce. Think of what the British war ships are doing all along the coast, and the men they have impressed, like my father. We are poor and ragged and sometimes hungry, because they captured him from a coasting vessel, and he can’t come back to work for his family. We wouldn’t be any worse off in a war than we are now. We are not ready for war, but we can get ready if we have to.”

“What are you boys talking about?” Mrs. Macy asked, coming to the window. “It sounds like you were reciting a history lesson in school.”

“We are talking over what the men say every night on the long wharf, Captain Coffin and Captain Chase, and Uncle Hiram, and Levi and all of them. I tell you, mother, the people are getting fighting mad.”

“Well, Harry, you can cool off now by going up to the mill with a bushel of corn. We can get it ground as soon as Daniel Hussey’s grist is ground. Ask Cousin Ruth to lend you her wheel-barrow, and then

The Search on the Jennie B.

we can give her some of the meal. She needs it, poor woman.”

“But mother, I was going up to Levi’s store. Do you know if the brand on some of our sheep was changed ?”

“Don’t you go blustering Levi about that. I know all about it. You get the corn ground this morning, or you may have to go clamming for your supper.”

“We want to go out with Matt Swazey after dinner and try for blue fish.”

“You can do that. I would like to have a fish.”

The boys went up a lane, that was only ten feet wide, to a small cottage, where Ruth Chase lived all alone. Her only son, Peter, had been caught by a press gang in Liverpool, and killed at sea in a battle with a French warship. His mother was now a childless widow, but she was not allowed to suffer for food, for nearly all the families on the island were related, and the unfortunate ones were taken care of in a kind way. There were other families, whose fathers or sons had been taken by English vessels from the coasters. The business of the Nantucket men, which was whaling and the coasting trade, had been entirely broken up by the oppressions of the English. The people had gone back again to primitive conditions. Their food came from the sea and from their gardens, and their clothing from the sheep on the commons.

The wind mill was on a low hill, south of the village, and the boys did not have an easy task pushing the wheelbarrow through the sandy streets and roads. They could hear the wheel creaking, and see the big sails slowly sweeping up and down long before they reached it. As they came near, Ike ran up the slope and caught a sail as it was coming down, and hung on until it began to rise again on the other side. His ride was shortened by the angry miller, who seized him by the leg and gave him a hard jerk, which sent him sprawling in the clay bank, where he lay for a minute rubbing his knees and leg.

“I’ll larn ye to let my sails alone. Must I hev my wheels and stones stopped by yer putting the cargo of yer lazy carcass on the sails? Try it agin, an I’ll rig up a jury mast, an tie ye to it, an give ye a taste o’ the cat.”

Ike scrambled up in a hurry and got out of reach of the miller’s hands, and Harry came up and asked if he was ready to grind his mother’s corn. The miller answered him, in a surly tone, that he must wait his turn, but as Harry saw the hopper was nearly empty, and there was no other grist in sight, he knew he would not have long to wait.

Ike grew bolder and came in, and the two boys examined the machinery. When the Hussey grist had run out, the wind had veered around to the northwest, and the miller slipped off the gearing, and went out to set his sails. The upper part, or hood of the mill,

The Search on the Jennie B.

carrying the shaft, was framed separately from the rest of the mill, and moved around on wheels over a circular plate. On the side opposite the big wheel was a long timber fastened to the hood, and slanting down to a wheel which ran on a circular track around the mill. By this means the top could be turned around and the sails brought into the wind.

The miller leaned his weight against this timber which he called his rudder, and the boys put their hands to it, and slowly the heavy frame was turned until the sails were brought around several points. Then the miller adjusted his gearings,^ and the machinery hummed merrily, and the air grew dusty as Harry’s corn was ground. The miller did not thank the boys for their help, but his crusty manners thawed a little, and he civilly answered some of their questions. When the grist had run out he took out his toll, and Harry made ready to take his meal home.

“There’s a sail off Tuckernuck. It’s a sloop.” Ike said coming in.

“How d’ye know? You can’t see a sail from here,” said Harry.

“You bin aloft on my rudder-pole, you raskil. I’ll skin you for that.”

Ike, however, kept out of the miller’s reach, who was too curious about the sail to chase him. He climbed the stairs inside to a window, and saw the sloop running in as close as she could on a lee shore.

“Looks like the Jennie B. and Captain Bunker spies danger.” The miller turned his glass to the east. “There’s another sail off Great Point. Bunker wants to run in here before she picks him up but he can’t do it. If she be an English sail, somewhat will happen in the harbor.”

The boys raced off for home a good deal faster than they came. When they reached Center Street, they saw the old captains out on their walks, glass in hand, and down by the wharf knots of excited men talking, while others were rushing along to the road up the cliff.

Now the glasses were turned on Great Point, and before long a thin column of smoke rose, and in a few minutes another signal fire was lighted, and its message of smoke carried over the island. Then the watchers knew that an English war vessel was passing through the sound, and was shaping its course toward the harbor. The sloop was now well past Tuckernuck and sailing fast before the wind. Signals were flying already from the Trot Hills, and the sloop was crowding on all sail. In a half hour she crossed the bar, while the British schooner was still several miles in the offing. They watched her on her long tack, hoping her course would not be changed; but when she reached the right point men were seen to go aloft, the braces were hauled about, and the helm put hard a lee. The white wings filled again, and in less than

The Search on the Jennie B.

an hour the schooner came racing around Brant point, and dropped her anchor in the Bay. The boys by this time had run down to the wharf, and Harry’s eyes grew round with wonder, and his heart was pumping like an engine, when he read on the white side of the schooner the name “Tigress.”

“See there Ike! She’s the Tigress! I must know whether father’s aboard her. Do you think the captain will let him come ashore?”

“No such good luck for him. If the captain knows he’s a Nantucket man, he will put a guard over him.”

“I’m going to watch close and find out. He’ll give us some signal, or send us a message. If I was to go out the captain would let me see him.”

“Perhaps he will try to escape. You keep quiet till he makes some sign.”

Now the boys got interested in what was taking place on the Tigress. An officer hailed the sloop.

“What ship is that?”

“The Jenny B.”

“Where from?”

“New Bedford.”

“Where bound?”

“Boston with corn, flour, and sugar.”

A boat was lowered, and an officer and several marines soon boarded the sloop. The officer insisted on examining the cargo. The sugar was in French boxes, and it was ordered to be brought out as contraband goods. Captain Bunker protested in vain.

He went aboard the Tigress, and had a stormy interview with the captain, but with no result except to anger the Englishman. Captain Bunker said he would enter complaint of the robbery with the Secretary of State, and the English Government would be compelled to make good the loss. The captain’s answer to that was a derisive laugh.

When the sugar had been transferred, the officer ordered Captain Bunker to muster his crew on deck. Although he saw another outrage was to be imposed on him, he was obliged to submit. The lieutenant looked at the sailors and declared two of them looked like Englishmen. They swore they were Massachusetts men, from Cape Cod. One of the marines said he knew them, and gave them names they never heard of, and then another marine declared he had seen them on board an English ship. The two sailors indignantly denied that they had ever served on English vessels, but the lieutenant ordered them to get into his gig, and carried them off to the Tigress. All this caused a great stir among the men on the wharf, and made them very indignant over the outrages. But as they did not know what this tyrannical captain might do next, they could do no more than make a strong protest against his illegal actions.

CHAPTER II. William Macy Surrenders Himself

In the meantime, Harry and Ike untied a small boat, without waiting to ask Levi Coffin if they might use it. He probably would have refused, for there was no telling what this arrogant Englishman might do with the property of the islanders. Harry was too impatient to know whether his father was on board to remain quiet on the pier. He hoped to see him, or get a word or two from him, before he sailed off again. So he pulled out as if to take a look at the Tigress. As they passed around the schooner, he saw a man's head close under the hull, and a rope hanging above him. The man held up a hand, and motioned to them to sheer off up the bay, and then he dived. In a moment he came up nearer, and then dived again. This soon brought him near, and Harry started as he saw the man's face, for it was his father.

“Keep quiet, boy, I’m your daddy."

He floated around to the larboard side of the dory.

“Is any one looking this way on the Tigress?"

“No, there’s no one on the larboard. They are watching the Jennie B."

“Pass your painter under the thwart, and give me a holt."

He took the rope, and kept in the shadow of the boys, while they pulled hard towards the Shimmo shore a half mile away.

“There’s some kind of a muss on shipboard,” said Ike. “It looks like they’ve missed you, and are mustering the crew. There’s an officer pointing this way, and he’s sent a man aloft.”

The next minute the officer hailed,

“Boat ahoy, pull to the ship.”

“Pay no attention, boys. Row hard.”

There was a puff of smoke and a musket cracked, and a bullet struck the water too short to reach them. The boys pulled steadily ahead. Then one of the schooner’s guns was fired, but the shot went over them. This did not stop the boys, who were now getting into shoal water, within two hundred yards of the shore.

“I’ll run for it, Harry, and I know where to hide. They are lowering their gig. Run your boat in the inlet, and hide in the swamp.”

Long before the gig came up the boys had run their light boat into a cove, and were safely hidden. Harry’s father had run for a smuggler’s cave, and he knew the searchers would not find him. The lieutenant came in a yawl with more men, and they patrolled the beach, and searched among the bushes for an hour, but found no one. The captain sent a boat ashore, and demanded the return of the deserter, but the selectmen knew nothing of his escape, and could do nothing about his return. The captain vented his anger on the Jennie B. He fired several shots at her, riddling her rigging, and cutting down her mast, and then, because the boys had aided in the escape of his sailor, he sent a shot into a group of children gathered near Brant Point light. Fortunately no one was hurt. The girls screamed, and the boys grew pale with fear, and all scattered, hardly daring to look around. They climbed up the sandy cliff, and sneaked back through the lanes into the village, and not a child showed itself on the beach until the sails of the Tigress were sinking below the western horizon.

But the Tigress remained in the harbor for several hours, and did not sail until she had committed another injury whose evil consequences lasted for years, and laid a burden on Harry’s shoulders that was heavy for so young a lad.

Captain Tompson was enraged at the desertion of Macy, not only because he was a first class seaman, and too valuable a man to lose, but also because the desertion of seamen was a very serious matter on all the English war vessels in American waters. The men were discontented because they were cruelly treated, and their pay was small. When the American commerce was flourishing sailors were in demand, and wages were sometimes three times what seamen received in the English navy, or on their merchant vessels.

The captain now discovered that Macy was a Nantucket man, and although the fact made his retention illegal, it did not deter Captain Thompson from making strenuous efforts to recover him. When Lieutenant Smith reported that there were two Nantucket lads in the crew of the Jennie B, he cunningly devised a scheme for securing the deserter that would have done credit to a savage Shawnee Indian. He sent the lieutenant back to the sloop with a double crew, and told him to bring the two young men back, if he had to go ashore to find them, and if any protest was made to order their parents to come aboard the Tigress.

The young men were not, in fact, a part of the regular crew. They wanted to get back to their homes from New Bedford, and agreed to work their passage. One of them was James Mitchel, the son of a poor widow, and the other was Tom Starbuck, the only son of Thaddeus Starbuck, an old and wealthy sea captain, who lived in one of the big houses on Center Street. One son had been lost at sea, a daughter died in her youth, and only Tom was left.

The boy was wild and head-strong, and his father had a hasty temper, and the two did not get along peaceably. The father wanted him to study, and the boy was wild to go to sea. He seemed to delight in the worst companions he could find, and would not listen to his father’s advice, and the antagonism between them grew so great, that Tom left home on a passing schooner, early in the spring and had not been heard from since. Now, with empty pockets, the prodigal was coming back home.

Captain Starbuck was all broken up by the message sent to him by Captain Bunker, that his son had been impressed on the Tigress, and Mrs. Starbuck was completely prostrated. As soon as he could leave her, he went down to the wharf, and heard all the story. It was plain that the boys were taken as hostages to compel the return of William Macy. He induced the selectmen to go out with him to hold an interview with Captain Thompson. The British commander was very arrogant, making many threats, but the selectmen were bold and dignified in their replies, holding out a resolute front against such acts of oppression. But Captain Starbuck was ready to compromise.

“What do you want to release my boy? He’s not fit for a sailor. He is only sixteen years old.”

“I’ll not release either one unless I get Macy back.”

“I will pay you a hundred dollars, twenty pounds to ransom Tom.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“Then I’ll make it one hundred pounds.”

“I say I don’t want your money. Bring that deserter aboard and you can take the two boys ashore. You need not waste time on any other terms/’

“I cannot get Macy, nor can I compel him to come aboard again. You haven’t made his life on shipboard an easy one, so that he wants to ship again with you.”

“You are compelled to acknowledge that Macy is a Nantucket man, and not a British subject, and that your detention of him would be illegal. Therefore your seizing of these boys is a double crime. All these facts will be laid before the President and Secretary of State.”

Captain Thompson listened to Levi Coffin’s statement. Then his face hardened.

“The Tigress will sail at high tide this evening. If Macy is aboard then, the boys will be put ashore. I care nothing for all your protests and the proclamations from your President. You need not waste time here, but go and find Macy.”

The selectmen when they reached the pier urged Captain Starbuck to take up the proposal, and try to induce Macy to go back. Levi Coffin and Martin Hussey went with him, in one of the four-wheeled box carts, toward the Shimmo shore. They found William concealed in a smuggler’s cave, and had a long talk with him. At first he would not listen to any proposition. Liberty was too sweet to be given up again. His family needed him. They would starve without his support, and it was his duty to take care of them. Besides war was coming, and he was not one to join the enemy, and fight against his own flag.

“You need not be concerned about your family. I will provide for them, as if they were my own children ?” said Captain Starbuck. “They will be kept in comfort, and the children sent to school.”

“I can’t do it. If you knew the tyranny of that brute of a commander, you wouldn’t ask me to go back. It’s a flogging I’ll get as soon as he clears port, and bread and water for a week.”

“Think then what Tom will suffer under him. That boy won’t bear restraint. He is violent in temper and stubborn. He will be flogged to death. Or if that should not happen he will be ruined by bad company.”

“You should have brought him up differently.”

“I have tried in vain to make him an industrious, sober boy. His mother has done everything for him but in vain. She is broken-hearted now, and I fear she will not live long if he is carried off. You do not know how frail she is.”

This last appeal touched William Macy, for Mrs. Starbuck had been a good friend to him in his youth. The captain saw his advantage, and followed it up, and repeated his promise to look after the family until Macy returned. Finally it was settled. Captain Starbuck offered to pay William a hundred dollars that day, but he declined it, leaving it to the captain’s honor to keep his word when Mrs. Macy needed it. For he had thirty English pounds sewed up in his clothing which would be all they would need for some months, and he did not want to feel dependent on any one.

William got into the cart and went home, but the joyous greeting of his wife and children was soon turned into sorrow, when they heard that he was going back to the Tigress. He had little time to be with them, for all the town people were like one family, and they wanted to see William before he went away again.

Mr. Macy charged Harry to be a good boy, to work hard, to take good care of his mother and his brothers and sisters.

“I may never see you again, my son, but if I live, I will come back. They will watch me close, but I may get another chance to escape. In three years my enlistment as they call it will expire, and perhaps I will be released. ,,

Mrs. Macy clung to her husband feeling sure she would never see him again. She begged him to stay, and let the boys be taken. But nothing could change Mr. Macy’s purpose, having given his word, although he was a tender-hearted man, and his wife’s tears and pleading wrung his heart. At last in the middle of the afternoon he tore himself away from her and the children, and passed out of the mass of cousins and

Captain Starbuck in a tremrling voice thanked Mr. Macy for his magnanimous action aunts, who filled the house, and thronged about the door, and flocked with him down the streets. The long wharf was black with men and women, and he could hardly press his way through the friendly throngs, who insisted on taking the hand of this noble man, who was sacrificing himself for young men who were hardly worthy of such costly devotion.

The selectmen had sent word to Captain Thompson, and a boat manned by sixteen sailors was waiting near the pier. When William appeared at the steps with the officials, the boat was pulled in.