All this happened more than a thousand moons ago, when all the land was aroused and astir, and David Bushnell was not in the least surprised to meet, at the ship-yard of Uriah Hayden, Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut.
This man was everywhere, seeing to everything, in that year. Whatever his country needed, or Commander-in-chief Washington ordered from the camp at Cambridge, was forthcoming.
A ship had been demanded of Connecticut, and so Governor Trumbull had come down from Lebanon to look with his own eyes at the huge ribs of oak, thereafter to sail the seas as “The Oliver Cromwell.”
The self-same oaken ribs had intense interest for young David Bushnell. Uriah Hayden had promised to sell to him all the pieces of ship-timber that should be left, and while the governor and the builder planned, he went about gathering together fragments.
“Better take enough to build a boat that will carry a seine. ’T won’t cost you a mite more, and might serve you a good turn to have a sizable craft in a heavy sea some day,” said Mr. Hayden.
Now David Bushnell had been wishing that he had some good and sufficient reason to give Mr. Hayden for wanting the stuff at all, and here he had given it to him.
“That’s true,” spoke up David, “but how am I to get all this over to Pochaug?”
“Don’t get it over at all, until it’s ready to row down the Connecticut, and around the Sound. You’re welcome to build your boat at the yard, and, now and then, there will be odd minutes that the men can help you on with it.”
David thanked Mr. Hayden, grew cheerful of heart over the prospect of owning a boat of his own, and went merrily back to the village of Pochaug.