“Cut off, ev’n in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel’d, unanointed, unanneal’d.”
Bootless sorrow! He had made his bloody bed—and therein must he lie o’nights, and in no other. There were no hops in that pillow, for his burning brain. The undying memory of a murdered victim—what an everlasting agrypnic it must be!
Time, to this wretched boy, seemed very like eternity, that night—but the sound of the splashing oar was audible at last—the boat touched the wharf—for the last time he shook the hand of his friend, Peter Faneuil, and left the land of his birth, which he was destined never to revisit.
The boat was turned from the shore, and the rowers gave way. But so intense was the fog, that night, that they got on shore, at Dorchester Neck; and, not until long after midnight, reached the Sheerness, man of war. They were received on board. Captain Conrad and Lieutenant Pritchard were very naturally disposed to sympathize with “a fair young man,” in a predicament, like this—it was all in their line. Gillam, the elder brother, related the occurrence; and, before day, parted from Henry, whom he was destined to meet no more. Early, on the following morning, the events of the preceding night had been whispered, from man to man; for the pleasure of being among the earliest, to communicate the intelligence of a bloody murder, was precisely the same, in 1728, as it is, at the present day. Mrs. Winslow, the lady of the Captain of the Molly, had learned all the details, doubtless, before the morning watch. The surgeons, who dressed the wounds of Henry Phillips, for he also was wounded, felt themselves under no obligation to be silent. The sailors of the Molly, who had overheard the conversation of several of the party, were under no injunction of secrecy. Indeed, long before the dawn of the fourth of July—not then the glorious Fourth—the intelligence had spread, far and wide; and parties were scouring the Common, in quest of the murdered man. At an early hour, Governor Dummer’s proclamation was in the hands of some trusty compositor, in the office of Samuel Kneeland, in Queen Street; and soon the handbills were upon all the town pumps, and chief corners, according to the usage of those days.
There is a pleasure, somewhat difficult of analysis, undoubtedly, in gazing for hours upon the stuffed skin of a beast, that, when in the flesh, has devoured a respectable citizen. When good Mr. Bowen—not the professor—kept his museum in the mansion, occupied, before the Revolution, by the Rev. Dr. Caner, and upon whose site the Savings Bank, and Historical Society have their apartments, at present, nothing in all his collection—not even the Salem Beauty—nor Marat and Charlotte Cordé—interested me so much, as a broken sword, with a label annexed, certifying, that, during the horrors of St. Domingo, seven and twenty of the white inhabitants had fallen, beneath that sword, in the hands of a gigantic negro! How long, one of the fancy will linger—“patiens pulveris atque solis” for the luxury of looking upon nothing more picturesque than the iron bars of a murderer’s cell!
It had, most naturally, spread abroad, that young Philips was concealed, on board the man of war. Hundreds may be supposed to have gathered, in groups, straining their eyes, to get a glimpse of the Sheerness; and the officer, who, in obedience to the warrant, proceeded, on that foggy morning, to arrest the offender, found more difficulty, in discovering the man of war, than was encountered, on the preceding evening, by those, who had sought for the body of Woodbridge, upon the Common. At length, the fog fled before the sun—the vista was opened between the Castle and Spectacle Island—but the Sheerness was no longer there—literally, the places that had known her, knew her no more.
Some of our worthy fathers, more curious than the rest, betook themselves, I dare say, to the cupola of the old townhouse—how few of us are aware, that the present is the third, that has occupied that spot. There, with their glasses, they swept the eastern horizon, to find the truant ship—and enjoyed the same measure of satisfaction, that Mr. Irving represents the lodger to have enjoyed, who was so solicitous to get a glimpse of the “Stout Gentleman.”
Over the waters she went, heavily laden, with as much misery, as could be pent up, in the bosom of a single individual.
He was stricken with that malady, which knows no remedy from man—a mind diseased. In one brief hour, he had disfranchised himself for ever, and become a miserable exile.
Among the officers of the Sheerness, he must have been accounted a young lion. His gallantry, in the estimation of the gentlemen of the wardroom, must have furnished a ready passport to their hearts—he had killed his man!—with the civilized, not less than with the savage, this is the proudest mark of excellence! How little must he have relished the approbation of the thoughtless, for an act, which had made him the wretched young man, that he was! How paltry the compensation for the anguish he had inflicted upon others—the mourning relatives of him, whom he had, that night, destroyed—his own connections—his mother—he was too young, at twenty-two, to be insensible to the sufferings of that mother! God knows, she had not forgotten her poor, misguided boy; as we shall presently see she crossed the ocean, to hold the aching head, and bind up the broken heart of her expatriated son—and arrived, only in season, to weep upon his grave, while it was yet green.