My neck prickled fiercely, and I could not speak.
"You see, Mr. Blackburn, Vermont was the first of the states to forbid slavery," the patriarch told me, as though I might think the proposal a foolish one. "My son Ethan was mighty proud of that; and I don't doubt he boasted of it, 'mongst his shipmates."
"Yes, sir, he did. But aren't any of his kinsmen in need?"
"They're not, and if they were, they'd get in and scratch," Stella Blood answered. "If they become truly bad off, we others will pitch in and help them. None is rich, but all of us have enough, and the young'ns have hope and opportunity galore. You can give me five hundred to save for a rainy day—I'll pass it out where it's most needed and 'twill go the farthest. The rest we'd like to send to the Quakers and to Doctor Rushmore's Society in Pennsylvania, in their fight for all men to be free."
To be free! Suddenly I was looking again into the face of Zoan, chief of the Tuareg. He had told me that the chains I had worn would be hung in their camps on the desert, to remind them of how I had been a slave, and in token of their pledge never again to hold their fellow men in slavery. But I could not look upon these eager faces here about me, because my eyes had overflowed with tears.
Farmer Blood, we will fight on till Captain's gone—and he will never leave us in this world.
I had been off watch awhile, but now I must go back. On the excuse of a sight-seeing with a little fishing on the side, I chartered a lugger with a well-salted crew of four. At my whim, we cruised eastward across the Bay of Fundy, northeastward along the long Nova Scotian coast, northwestward through the Gut of Canso, and a hundred miles north until we lay off the Magdalen Islands, looking like a pair of leg bones on a chart, rough, chill—thinly peopled by fishermen, wood cutters, and shepherds. One of the islands was named Grindstone. I decided to go ashore and stretch my legs.
"A kinsman of mine, Cap'n Ezra Fairbank, was lost off this isle when I was a babe," I remarked to a halibuter on a dank little dock.
"Do tell!" he commented politely, an exclamation that I had thought confined to New England.
"He was captain of the Yankee privateer Saratoga, and he fell foul of the English sloop of war, Our Eliza. The Yankee was sunk with all hands."
" 'Pears like I heared about that fight from some 'n."
"Do you suppose there's anyone on the island that would remember it?"
"That, there is! Uncle Jake Tate can remember everything that ever happened here since Wolfe came into the Gulf to take Quebec, and before that, I reckon. Would you like to talk to him? His house is not five minutes' walk from here."
We found the old trawler sawing wood, and my first satisfaction lay in his firm, ruddy face, keen eyes, and youthful movements. Actually he was about seventy-five—by that reckoning he had been a youth of sixteen when Wolfe died on the plains of Abraham overlooking the Saint Lawrence, so young was America, so short was her history compared to the story of the Nile.
"Uncle Jake, this gentleman wants to know if you remember a sea fight off here, between an American privateer and an English sloop of war during the rebellion."
"As though it was yesterday," the gaffer answered briskly. "I and my three boys climbed yon crest to watch. We didn't know their names at the time, but we found out later they were Our Eliza, under Cap'n Tarlton, and the Saratoga, in command of Cap'n Fairchild."
"Fairbank, sir."
"Thank 'ee. 'Twas a slip of the tongue. Cap'n Ezra Fairbank, if my memory fails me not. Twas a hard-fought fight. They lay broadside, laying it on."
"When the Saratoga went down, did Our Eliza put out boats to pick up survivors?"
"The Saratoga didn't go down during the fight where we could see."
"What?"
"Mark you, I had to leave the lookout 'cause of some duty, but my boys stayed up thar. The Saratoga struck her colors. That was what we heard later. But my boys thought it was the sloop of war what asked for quarter. The two ships had got out a good way and a light mist had come up; still it was hard to believe my sharp-eyed sons had made a mistake, and you could knock us all down with a feather when the news came in. I had to lam my oldest son, Matt, for holdin' out that the Yankee had won—he being so certain he 'sputed the post boy. But neither ship was sunk. They quit firing and lay side by side awhile, and I got back to the lookout in time to see the Yankee making east with the sloop about a sea mile in her wake. They passed clean out of sight."
"East?" I heard myself ask softly.
"Why, yes."
"If the Englishman had won, why didn't he and his prize make west?"
"I reckon he meant to round Cape Breton Island down to Halifax."
"Where was the wind?"
"Out of the east, and right brisk."
"Would the English captain take his prize into the teeth of a contrary wind instead of running full sail into Quebec?"
" 'Tis odd when you think of it."
"If the Yankee had won, she'd make eastward hard as she could tack, get out to sea, and double back to Boston."
"That may be so, but Our Eliza came to port—in Halifax like I told ye—and the Saratoga was never seen again."
"The story was that Our Eliza sank her in the fight."
"Well, she didn't. That much I know. What I pictured was, she was leaking bad and her seams gave way and she went down all of a sudden, soon after me and my boys lost sight of her. It amounted to the same as her going down in the fight, and 'twas the way the story got out, and I reckoned Cap'n Tarlton didn't bother to set it straight."
"No, sir, it didn't amount to the same thing, because the prize crew Tarlton had put aboard would have gone down with her."
"Yes, unless he rescued 'em, and if he did that, he'd have picked up some Yankees, too."
The old bright-blue eyes confronting mine had become deeply troubled. I waited patiently. I thought Uncle Jake Tate would have something more to say.
"I'll pass on to you something my youngest sister told me," he went on at last. "She got it from a beau of hers, Sam Lincoln, trapping on Saint Paul Island. He said two ships came out of the west, and all of a sudden the foremost one, a three-masted Yankee, blowed up in one big burst of flame. He thought her powder magazine had caught fire somehow."
"How did he know she was a Yankee?"
"She was flyin' the Stars and Stripes from her masthead. But the vessel follerin' didn't show her colors."
"What happened then?"
"The hindmost ship started to the scene, but soon turned broadside to the wind and fell off a ways. After a while she swung about and tacked up thar, but she didn't put out no boats—there was no use, I reckon—and went on her way."
"Didn't it occur to you they were the same ships?"
"Yes, sir, but by then the news was out that the sloop of war had won, and if they was the same ships, the Yankee wouldn't be flying her flag—that is, if the news was true, and who could doubt it? Marthy said he'd seen the flag as plain as day. Also, the victory ship would stay to the wind'ard of her prize, and again it was the Yankee windward of t'other. I puzzled about it for a while, but let it go."
"Did you ever talk to Sam about it?"
"I can't say as I did. I only seen him two or three times after that when we didn't have no chance, then he moved to Saint John, in New Brunswick."
"Is Sam Lincoln still alive?"
"That, he is. The last time I heared."
"If I paid you a hundred dollars now, would you come with me on the lugger and try to find him, with another hundred if you succeed, and pay your own way back?"