“Well, thank goodness, he’s been ordered from the city by his chiefs,” ejaculated Mr. Dana, fervently. “One could scarcely count upon one’s liberty while he was here.”
“This hectoring fellow, Putnam, who is now in command, as he calls it, is little milder in his arrestings and confiscatings,” complained Camp. “And I understand that the arch-rebel himself is even now upon his way here. When he arrives, I suppose there’ll be scarce a tree or pole in the town that’ll not have the body of some poor Loyalist gentleman dangling from it.”
“Do you actually believe that Washington will have the effrontery to show himself here, with the king’s fleet and an army due at any time?”
His companion snapped his fingers. “Mr. Washington,” declared he, “is to all appearances a man of enterprise. To be sure he’ll come here, and he’ll bring his rabble of raw countrymen with him to overawe us.”
During the period in which he had engaged his friend and business partner as above, the angry manner of Mr. Camp and his excited gestures had not failed to attract attention. Workmen, carters and merchants’ clerks had gathered into little groups; seamen upon the decks of vessels near by grinned and pointed him out to their mates. Few could hear his words; but his anger was so demonstrative, his gestures so eloquent that none missed his meaning. A lot of rough-looking fellows were lounging at the end of the wharf upon an upturned yawl; they had the appearance of deep-water sailors, wore knives in their belts and possessed an altogether ugly look.
The words of the old gentleman were perfectly audible to these men, as they were no great distance from him, and their frowning brows and muttered remarks showed that they did not take the matter as good-humoredly as those upon the shallop.
Mr. Dana grasped at his companion’s disparaging reference to Washington’s army.
“Raw countrymen,” said he, “describes them exactly. And do you suppose that such an array can hope to stand before the trained regiments of England?”
“Not if the trained regiments of England are properly directed. But I have little expectation that they will be. And in the meantime, our business—everybody’s business—is at a standstill. It is an outrage—a scandal! The leaders of this shameful revolt should be whipped at the cart’s tail!”
As he spoke these words, the pair in their pacing had arrived at a point very near to the group of seamen before mentioned. One of these, a hulking fellow, with a bare, bull throat and a particularly unprepossessing face, lifted himself from his lounging posture against the yawl.