While Davy was begging not to be sent back, the elder Crockett was cutting a stout hickory switch, and from past experience the boy knew what this meant. At his father’s first move towards him, he broke into a run. The chase lasted a mile, when the boy dodged aside into the bushes, and his father then gave up the hunt. Davy had been careful to lead off in a course away from the school-house, having a keen idea of his fate if both the teacher and his father should get him at the same time.
Fearing to return, Davy kept on for several miles and put up for the night at the house of a man who was about to start for Virginia with a drove of cattle. The boy at once hired out to go with him, and before starting one of the older Crockett boys joined them. Thus was Davy again a pilgrim, with a journey of nearly four hundred miles before him. The trail they followed was probably about the same as the route of the Norfolk & Western Railroad of the present time, through Abingdon, Wytheville, and Blue Ridge Springs, to Lynchburg, passing south of Hanging Rock, to which place Davy had travelled the previous year. From Lynchburg the drove went on to Charlottesville and Orange Court House, up the headwaters of the Rapidan, again through the Blue Ridge Mountains, to Front Royal, on the Shenandoah River, where the stock was sold.
Davy and a brother of the man with whom he had started out, with a single horse for the two, now took the homeward trail. They were together three days, travelling with so little rest that the boy finally told the man to go ahead, and that he would come when he got ready. He bought some provisions with four dollars that the man had given him for the four hundred miles’ journey, and plodded stolidly along until he met a wagoner who lived in Tennessee, and who intended to return after his trip was finished. He was bound for Winchester, not very far away, and as he was a jolly sort of fellow, Davy gladly accepted his offer to take him along. Two days later they met Davy’s brother and the rest of the former party, but Davy refused to go with them. He says that he could not help shedding tears, as he watched his brother disappear, but the thought of the schoolmaster, and of his angry father with the big hickory switch, was too potent.
At Gerardstown, Virginia, Davy worked for twenty-five cents a day for a man named John Gray. Adam Myers, the wagoner, was engaged all winter in hauling loads to and from Baltimore. When spring came, Davy had money to buy decent clothes, and something like seven dollars besides. He took it into his head that he would go with Myers to Baltimore, to see what kind of place it was, and how people lived there. This came near being Davy’s last trip, for on reaching Ellicott’s Mills he had perched himself on top of the barrels of flour that made the load, when the horses ran away at the sight of a road gang with wheelbarrows. The frightened animals turned short about, snapped the pole and then both axle-trees, and nearly buried the boy in the falling barrels. Escaping with nothing more serious than bruises, the two went on with a hired wagon, and soon arrived in Baltimore.
At this place Davy Crockett nearly became a sailor. The harbor was full of shipping, gay with flags and the glories of fresh paint, loading and discharging the riches of all nations. There were never such ships as the Baltimore clippers. Their memory lives in the hearts of every true sailor—
The Flying Cloud and the Cockatoo,
The Southern Cross, the Caribou,
The Polar Bear and the Northern Chief,
The Yankee Blade and the Maple Leaf.
The names of the vessels in the good old clipper times were those that set a boy’s heart to thumping, and the sight of a great full-rigged ship sweeping out to sea was enough to make sailors of farmers’ sons. It was the spring of 1800, and in the port there was a vessel flying the English flag, and then called the Polly. As much of Davy’s time as possible was spent on the wharves, and finally he took courage and went on board a vessel about to clear for London. She was a Yankee ship, for in those days every vessel that flew the Stars and Stripes, from Eastport to Savannah, was a Yankee. Seeing the boy gazing about the decks and aloft, one of her men began talking with him. The Polly being at a wharf near-by, it was not long before Davy heard the history of the old privateer, which had sailed from Baltimore in 1778, and before her return in November had fought with and captured three British armed merchantmen: the Reindeer, four hundred tons and fourteen guns, with a cargo worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; the Uhla, of same tonnage and ten guns, and a hundred thousand dollar cargo; and the Jane, of the tonnage and armament of the Reindeer, and with a cargo also worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. One-third of all this treasure was the share of the Government. Before the Polly was unlawfully seized in a neutral port and handed over to the English, she had captured nearly thirty prizes, in many cases fighting desperate battles for the mastery.
The master of the ship either took a fancy to Davy or thought that he might prove useful, for before the boy’s second day in Baltimore had passed, he had arranged to go to London as cabin-boy. But when he returned for what spare clothes he had on shore, and told Myers of his intent, the latter refused to give him either his money or clothing, and swore that he should not go. He kept watch over him, prevented his going to the ship, and started back with him as soon as ready, giving him no chance to escape. As he had become very harsh with Davy, threatening him with his whip, the boy left him one morning before daylight. Davy had not a cent in his pockets, but he resolved to go ahead and trust to Providence. This trait was the prominent feature of David Crockett’s nature: he made up his mind, and went ahead; it was hard to turn him, and he went at everything “hammer and tongs.”
As the historian contemplates the spectacle of this penniless thirteen-year-old youngster bravely facing towards his home, four or five hundred miles away, it is but natural to wonder what would have become of him if he had sailed for London. He might have become a famous sailor, a reckless privateer, or a merchant with ships in every sea. Up to this time Davy had had no schooling, except the four days at the place to which he had been afraid to return. Many a boy of the present time is graduated from a high school at fourteen, but Davy Crockett did not know a single letter of the alphabet. As it was, however, the Fates had no idea of sending him to sea, and while the great ship was beating her way along the Atlantic coast, he was resolutely facing west.