The smoke from the burning effigy drifted down on the crowd, and Biddlecomb caught again the familiar smell that he had noticed blocks from the square, and he realized that it was Stockholm tar.
Biddlecomb looked past Rumstick and the knot of men who detained the wretched victim and noticed for the first time the cauldron that hung from a tripod over a small flame. And just as he realized what was about to happen, Rumstick's voice roared out above the crowd.
"Fetch the tar, lads!" he cried. "Let's do him right!" And with this command half a dozen boys dipped buckets in the cauldron and pulled them out filled and dripping with the steaming tar. The men that had been restraining the victim now tore off what few clothes he had remaining. Biddlecomb could see the man's mouth moving, forming curses and screaming, but he could not hear the words over the mob. The halter holding the burning effigy parted and the body fell in a mass of burning embers. The crowd surged forward over the still-burning straw and circled the victim, now half-covered in tar.
The mob seemed crazed, and Biddlecomb wondered if they would turn on the man and hang him in actuality as they just had in effigy. But the man was unharmed, save for the buckets of tar that were being poured steadily over his head. Already the unfortunate man was quite black, white showing only when he dared to open his eyes or mouth.
Rumstick held up his huge hand and the tarring stopped, and a group of women steppes forward with half-filled pillowcases in each hand. The women, laughing and encouraged by the shrieking mob, poured feathers over the thrashing victim. The more the poor man flailed his arms, the more widely the feathers were distributed, and within a moment he looked like a macabre chicken with a vaguely human form. The look was comical in the extreme.
The crowd was now beyond the control of Rumstick or anyone else. They laughed and shouted insults and pelted the man with dirt and mud. A dozen men pushed through the crowd bearing a split log rail over their heads. They dropped the log to the ground and bound the victim's hands behind his back. Then they forced the victim to straddle the rail and lifted it again, none too gently, with the now silent chicken-man riding it like a horse. The crowd parted for them as they jogged down a street that opened onto the square, and the onlookers followed at a trot, their shouting not in the least diminished. Biddlecomb stood as the crowd flowed around him, watching the weird carnival disappear down the block.
"Isaac Biddlecomb, you great whoremonger!" he heard. He looked up and saw Rumstick rushing towards him. Rumstick threw his arms around him and sqeezed, in much the same manner that a bear would crush someone to death.
"Rumstick, good man! How are you, friend?" asked Biddlecomb when he had regained his breath.
"I'm well, my friend. Quite busy, but well."
"Aye, I can see that you are busy indeed. Who might that poor unfortunate have been?"
"He is the Royal Customs officer, the Billingsgate villain, and an infernal Tory. And far too zealous he was in carrying out his duties."
"Indeed. Well, I'll take my lessons from that and never do a job but by half whenever I'm in Providence," said Biddlecomb, and Rumstick laughed his deep laugh.
"I have no objection to a man doing his job, depending, of course, on what that job is. Have you come to join the fight?"
"Which fight is that, Ezra?"
"Why, the fight for independence, of course. When I saw you in the crowd, I thought, 'Now here is my good friend Isaac Biddlecomb come to forego his avarice and ambition and join the Sons of Liberty.'"
"Independence? Is that what you're fighting for? I thought you fought just because you liked to fight," Biddlecomb said, smiling, though he was not entirely joking.
"There might be something in that, I ain't adverse to a good fight. But at the heart of it is independence. have you come to join us?"
"No, Ezra. As sweet as independence might be, if it's given, I doubt it can be taken. Besides, independence would ruin my business, just when I'm coming into my own."
"I heard John Bull already ruined your business. You had all your money tied up in the Judea, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did, and, yes, it's gone." Biddlecomb felt the despair sweep over him again. It was so unreal, the events of the past days, like a wild dream, like someone else's life, that he had actually forgotten that the profit of five years at sea had, in five minutes, been swept away.
"I'm sorry, Isaac, really. But if this means you'll come to see how British rule is threatening our natural rights and liberties, well, then maybe it's for the better," Rumstick said, smiling, and before Biddlecomb could make an angry retort he continued, "Another thing. If you don't see the need of independency yet, that's your business, but I recon it's best if you kept it to yourself here in Providence. I pray you'll remember what you just witnessed and keep a mind of what you say."
Biddlecomb could see that his friend was not joking. "I'll be silent as a corpse on that subject."
"A fine plan. Come, we'll go to Sabine's and you'll buy me some beer. Or a sling. Yes, Sabine makes a fine sling, rum or gin, well to the northward." The two men stepped off toward Church Street, just as the sun disappeared behind the elegant houses on the hill.
Biddlecomb remembered Sabine's from previous visits to Providence as a crowded and raucous establishment. Seamen, newspapermen, merchants, rich or otherwise, all crowded into Sabine's. It was a place for those who held strong opinions and were not shy in their expression. Sabine's was the center of unrest in Providence, and and the unrest, like ink on a blotter, was spreading out quickly in all directions.
By the time Biddlecomb and Rumstick arrived at the tavern, every bench was jammed with men and nearly all of the standing room as well. Biddlecomb recognized many faces from the crowd in the square, and the excitement from the tarring and feathering of King George's customs man did not seem to have diminished. The men yelled at each other, calling over the din to make their points heard, and the occasional cries of "Liberty!" and "Death to parliamentary rascals!" made Biddlecomb shake his head and wonder at such open treason. Around and about through the crowd the potboys scurried with their wooden trays, spilling ale in the trampled sawdust on the floor, and the barmaids skillfully fended off the ribald suggestions of the men.
"So, my friend," began Rumstick when the two had seated themselves at a table whose occupants had deserted it in order that Rumstick might seat, "I had other reasons, you know, to hope that you had come to join the Sons of Liberty. That was something, what you did with old Judea. Deprived that blackhearted Wallace of his prize. Showed him what was what."
"Oh, yes, I showed him all right. Plowed a beautiful ship up on the rocks, threw away a fortune in molasses, not to mention every penny I was worth. I have no doubt that Wallace rues the day he crossed my wake. How on earth did you hear of this so soon?"
"I hear things. But don't you see? This is why we must fight for independence."