Within the Capes. Howard Pyle

CERTAIN members of Captain Tom Granger’s family have asked him, time and time again, why he did not sit down and write an account of those things which happened to him during a certain period of his life.

These happenings, all agree, are of a nature such as rarely fall to the lot of any man, crowding, as they did, one upon the heels of another, so that in two years’ time more happened to Tom Granger than happens to most men in a lifetime.

But Captain Granger has always shaken his head, and has answered that he was no writer and that a pen never did fit nicely betwixt his stiff fingers, as Mrs. Granger can tell them if they will ask her.

Beside this, he has hitherto had his affairs to look after, so that he may be able to leave behind him enough of the world’s goods to help his children and his children’s children easily along the road that he himself found not over smooth.

Now, however, he has given up much of his business to the care of his sons, who are mostly men well on in years, with families of their own, and who are discreet in the management of things. Therefore, having much more leisure time upon his hands than he has ever had in his life before, he will undertake to do as he has been asked, and to write a plain, straightforward story of his adventures. This he does with much diffidence, for, as I have said, he is no very good hand with the pen and the ink-horn. The story may be told in a rough way; nevertheless, I believe that many of those that read it will think well of it, having a certain tenderness for the writer thereof.

I am furthermore inclined to thus take upon myself the transcribing of the history of these things, because that Captain Tom Granger is coming fast to the ending of his life; and, though his latter days may be warm and sunny, like a late Indian summer, there are those yet to come in a few years who will not have the chance to hear of these things from his own lips. Therefore, as there has been much gossip about certain adventures that befell him, I would rather that they should learn of them under mine own hand than from hearsay. Truly, things get monstrously twisted in passing from mouth to mouth, and by the time that the story of these doings has passed down through three or four generations, the old gentleman might be turned into a pirate and a murderer, for all that I know, which would be a pretty state of affairs.

I do not know how it was that Tom Granger got the title of captain, for the highest grade that he ever reached was that of second mate of the Privateersman Nancy Hazlewood. However, as no one in Eastcaster ever had held so high a grade of the like nature up to that time, I suppose that the wonder really is that he was not called commodore, or even admiral.

Any one in Eastcaster can tell you where he lives; it is the large white house, with the porch in front, that stands well back from the road under the shadow of three broad maple trees. It is just across the way from the Hicksite Meeting-house. You can easily tell it as you go along the street, because there is a ship in full sail chiseled in relief on the stone gate-post, which is very well done indeed, and was carved by William Johnson, the stone-cutter, under mine own direction and supervision.

I will say here, that Captain Granger will be always glad to see you if, at any time, you should chance to come to Eastcaster. If he is not at home, you will be likely to find him playing chequers or backgammon at the Black Horse Tavern, just around the corner of Market street, and nearly opposite to the court-house.

However, that is neither here nor there, and I find that I am wandering from the point. But you must excuse and overlook that, bearing in mind that it is the way of an old man, who has done a great deal of talking in his day. I thank goodness that I am old enough now to know better than to gossip and talk as much as I used to do, and am rather silent than otherwise.

Nevertheless, I promise now that I will heave ahead with my yarn, though it may be that I will leave some things untold that you would like to hear, being, as I said, no great talker, in which case you must come to Eastcaster, and then I will tell you anything that you may want to know.

I will not enter into a long yarn concerning what happened in Tom Granger’s life before the year 1812, for though such a yarn would hold within it many concerns of interest, it is not for the sake of relating them that I have thus taken my pen betwixt my fingers. It was late in the spring of that year (1812) when he returned home after a three years’ cruise to the East Indies.

I think that there is no joy in all the world like that of getting home again after a long voyage, such as this had been. I do not know but that it repays one for all the sorrow and pain of leave-taking, and for the home-sickness that follows thereon. Even such changes

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