"Do you know, Ned, one of the first things I can remember is going down to Peterson's with mother or grandsir (when he was able to walk about), and Luce baking me turnovers, and Peterson making playthings for me. I tell you there wasn't a spear of grass in the path that ran across lots from our house to James's. I used to eat half my meals there; victuals tasted better there than anywhere else. I tell you, Ned, it takes Luce to cook. I heard Lion Ben tell father that if Peterson had received an education, there wouldn't be many ahead of him."
"He thinks a great deal of you, Walter. Don't you remember, the night you was going to be landed on that rock right in the ocean, and left there all alone, how he came forward and insisted on going in your room?"
"There's another I wish was here," said Walter, in a subdued tone, "and who will not be there to shake hands with us when we get home from this voyage."
"Uncle Isaac," said Ned, his eyes filling.
Walter made no answer, and the conversation dropped. After sitting a while in silence, the boys, saddened by the tender and touching associations invoked, left the spot, went on board the vessel, and set to work stopping a leak in the coating of the mainmast. The next day a peasant brought along a straw hive of honey to sell. The boys bought some, and, on going to the tree to eat it, found there the captain and second mate, with whom they shared, as they had purchased no small quantity.
While they were talking and eating, wishing for a gale of wind—a real Gulf of Lyons gale—to scatter the fleet, they saw a man-o'-war get under way, evidently for England, convoying two supply-ships.
The captain ascertained her name through Jacques; and it afterwards appeared that Nelson wrote to his brother by the man-o'-war that the inhabitants of Marseilles and Toulon were starving; that the blockade had been so strict, not even a boat could get into either place or on the coast with provisions. While this brave seaman was battling with the furious gales, heavy seas, thunder, lightning, and squalls of the Mediterranean, Captain Brown, Walter Griffin, Ned Gates, and Sam Hadlock were lying among the foliage of the oak, eating honey and soft bread, or watching him through the glass, and counting the very buttons on his coat, as he stood back and forth along the coast, patient, resolute, faithful to his weary, harassing task, and congratulating himself upon the strictness of the blockade.
"For nineteen weeks," writes he, "my crew have not had a morsel of fresh meat or vegetables; only salt junk, hard bread, and lime-juice."
During all this time, a Yankee brigantine, loaded to the bends with wheat and good yellow corn raised by Captain Rhines, Uncle Isaac, Lion Ben, Charlie Bell, and their neighbors, and pork, beef, saltpetre, and arms bought in England or the British provinces, was lying, almost within gunshot, in a cul-de-sac, where she could not escape if discovered, and coining money for her officers, crew, and owners.
While thus eating and chatting, they were joined by Jacques, who had returned from a visit to his family.