"Oh, that was the very best of it, I think," said Gracie. "War wouldn't be so very, very dreadful if it was all like that,—would it, Grandma Elsie?"
"No dear," Mrs. Travilla replied, smiling lovingly upon the little girl, and softly smoothing her golden curls.
"Was there any other fighting before the battle of Bunker Hill, Mamma?" queried Walter.
"Yes," she said, "there were some encounters along this New England coast."
"And Crown Point was taken too,—wasn't it, Mamma?" asked Rosie.
"Ah, yes! I had forgotten that part of my story," replied her mother. "It was taken two days later than Ticonderoga, also without any bloodshed. About the same time that Ticonderoga was taken, there was a British ship called the 'Canceaux' in the harbour of Portland. The captain's name was Mowat. On the 11th of May he and two of his officers were on shore, when a party of sixty men from Georgetown seized them.
"The officer who had been left in command of the vessel threatened what he would do if they were not released, and even began to bombard the town. Mowat was released at a late hour, but felt angry and revengeful, and succeeded in rousing the same sort of feeling in the admiral of the station.
"A month later the people of a town called Machias seized the captain of two sloops that had come into their harbour to be freighted with lumber, and convoyed by a king's cutter called the 'Margaretta.' The lumber was for the British army at Boston, and they, the Americans, got possession of the sloops, after taking the captain, whom they seized in the 'meeting-house.' The 'Margaretta' didn't fire on the town, but slipped away down the harbour in the dark that night, and the next morning sailed out to sea.
"Then forty men, under the command of Capt. Jeremiah O'Brien, pursued her in one of the captured sloops, and as she was a dull sailer, soon overtook her. An obstinate sea-fight followed; the captain of the cutter was mortally wounded, six of his men not so badly, and after an hour's fight the 'Margaretta's' flag was struck. It was the first time the British flag was struck on the ocean to Americans."