The First Capture: or, Hauling Down the Flag of England. Castlemon Harry
standing around whose opinions differed from their own, and they thought it would be the part of wisdom to keep their thoughts to themselves. They turned toward their homes, but they had plenty of opportunity to exchange ideas with one another.
The most of those who had listened to the messenger's news also turned away when he got through speaking and walked with their heads on their breasts and their eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground. Among them was one, Enoch Crosby by name, who seemed to think that the world was coming to an end because the British soldiers had been fired upon; but he did not believe as the Tories did by any means. He was an American; he could not forget that.
Among all the boys of his acquaintance there was no one more loyal to King George than he was. His father had been an officer in the service of the crown before he died, and Enoch believed that a monarch who had been selected to reign over a country, was placed there by divine right. The people had nothing to do with it except to hold themselves in readiness to obey his orders. He had English blood in his veins, and, although he felt the soil of America under his feet, he had been, almost ever since he could remember, a good and loyal subject of Great Britain, and hoped some day to serve King George with his sword. To have all this thing wiped out in a day by a fight, was rather more than the boy could live up under.
But he was an American. It came upon him with a force sometimes that almost took his breath away. He could still be loyal to his sovereign and ready to smite hip and thigh any one who said anything against him, but his sailor's love of fair play would not let him stand by and see his neighbors imposed upon.
Enoch had been watching this thing for two years and all the while he felt the ropes of tyranny growing tighter. Ever since General Gage had taken up his quarters in Boston he had been growing more and more severe in his treatment of the patriots. The Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, The Tea Party, and the conduct of his soldiers in destroying the ice on which the boys were accustomed to spend their half holidays – all these were galling to Enoch, and he hoped that the time would soon come when something would induce the King to do differently. But when Christopher Snyder was killed by Richardson for looking on at a mob who were engaged in throwing clods and stones at him, and Governor Hutchinson refused to sign Richardson's death warrant, it opened the eyes of Enoch and he began to see things in a plainer light. The man was put into prison, but at the end of two years was pardoned out by the King. Enoch found that it was necessary to fight in order to secure his rights, and it cost him a long and severe struggle to come to that conclusion. He was thinking about these things as he walked slowly homeward and went into the house. His mother, with snowy hair and steel-bowed spectacles, raised her eyes from her knitting, and one glance was enough to show her that something had gone wrong with Enoch.
If there was anybody on earth Enoch loved it was his mother. All her surroundings bore evidence to that fact. Enoch was a sailor – he had made a good many trips along the coast in little trading vessels – but when he was at home he was not idle. His mother had enough from the earnings of her husband to support her in as good a style as she cared to live; the raiment of herself and son was neat and comely, but that did not prevent her from sticking close to the New England maxim: "Those who do not work should not eat." She had plainly brought Enoch up with the same ideas, for when he was ashore he was always at work at something.
Mrs. Crosby did not go out to listen to the news the messenger had to bring, but Enoch went, and the face he brought back with him excited his mother's alarm at once. Like her son she had been waiting for this day, but she little dreamed that it would come so soon.
"What is it, boy?" she asked, dropping her knitting into her lap. "That man's horse seems to be near tired out. Has he come far?"
"He came from out west somewhere," said Enoch, dropping into the nearest chair. "But I don't know whether he came from Lexington or not."
"What should be going on at Lexington?" asked Mrs. Crosby; although something told her that the news the messenger brought was worse than any she had heard yet.
"They have had a fight out there," said Enoch, resting his head on his hands. "King George can make up his mind to one thing, and that is, he had better keep his men at home. The provincials whipped them because they destroyed property that did not belong to them."
"And they did have a fight sure enough?" said his mother.
"They had such a fight as they used to have with the Indians. They killed almost three hundred of them."
Mrs. Crosby settled back in her chair and looked at Enoch without speaking.
CHAPTER II
ENOCH'S HOME
"Enoch," said his mother, rising from her chair after a moment's pause and leading the way toward the kitchen, "breakfast is ready and waiting. While you are eating it I shall be pleased to hear something more about this fight. It looks to me now as though we had got to do battle with the King."
"That is the way it looks to me, too," said the boy.
The Crosby house would have been an object worth seeing if it had stood in this century. It was a double house built of logs, the places where they met being chinked with clay and the roof was thatched with long grass or rye straw. The windows consisted of small lead frames set with diamond plates of glass hung so that they opened inward instead of outward. As the building stood facing the south the "sun shone squarely in at noon," and gave warning that the dinner hour was approaching.
There were two rooms in which Mrs. Crosby took delight – her "best room" and her kitchen. The best room was used only on state occasions, that is, when the minister came to see them or some old-time friends dropped in for an hour or two. The andirons were of brass and shone so brightly that one could see his face in them, and in summer time the fireplace was always kept garnished with asparagus and hollyhocks. On the rude mantelpiece stood the high candlesticks made of the same material, and close beside them lay the tray and the snuffers. Here also was the library, small, it is true, for reading in those days was undertaken for improvement and not for pleasure. Books were scarce and cost money; but among them could be found the family Bible, Watts' Poems, Young's Night Thoughts, and Milton's Paradise Lost.
The best room for the family was in the kitchen, and that was where Enoch always liked to be. Sometimes in winter when he did not have to go to sea he read one of the well-thumbed volumes by the aid of a tallow dip. The blaze in the fireplace was always piled high, but even this was but little if any shelter from the cold. The places where the chinking did not fit were numerous, and the way the cold wind poured into the room made the words of an old writer perfectly apparent: "While one side of the inmate was toasting the other was freezing." To make matters still worse "the smoke escaping into the room by no means favored study or any other employment requiring the use of the eyes."
When Enoch followed his mother into the kitchen he saw there a well-filled table which had often made him hungry when he did not want anything to eat; but it had little effect upon him now. There was hot salt pork, vegetables, and bannocks,3 which were all their simple tastes required. In the place of tea they had milk; for those one hundred and forty men had long ago thrown the tea overboard in Boston harbor, and all that Mrs. Crosby had left was some tied up in a paper and stowed away in one of her bureau drawers. Before they seated themselves at the table they took their stand behind their chairs with bowed and reverent heads, while his mother offered up thanks to the Giver of all good for the provisions set before them. This was a plan always followed in Enoch's home. When his mother was away, at a quilting bee or sitting up with a sick person, Enoch never forgot the custom, but offered up prayers himself.
"Now, boy, I should like to hear something about that fight," said Mrs. Crosby, seating herself in her chair. "Have we got to fight the King, sure enough?"
"The things indicate that fact," said Enoch, helping his mother to a piece of the pork and to a potato which had been baked in the ashes on the hearth. "King George has not acted right with us anyway. When young Snyder was killed in Boston because he happened to be near a mob who were throwing stones at Richardson, the King went and pardoned out Richardson, who had been put into prison for it, after he had been there for two years. That does not look as though he felt very kindly toward us, does it?"
"And then the
Bannocks are something like the present "hoecakes" of the South – merely flat cakes of Indian meal or rye, wet with water and baked over the hot coals on the hearth.