“No, but we expect them every minute,” said Mr. Bushnell.
“Well, friends, I had a patient within three miles of you to visit, and I thought I’d come on and hear the news.”
Ere he was fully made welcome to hearth and home, in walked David, with the little Turtle under his arm. Without ado he went up to his mother and said:
“Madam, I present this to you, with Governor Trumbull’s compliments. He has ordered your boy money, men, metals and powder without stint to work with. Wish me joy, won’t you?”
I do not anywhere find a record of the words in which the joy was wished, on that 2nd of February, a hundred years ago, but it is easy to imagine the very tones in which the good, God-loving Dr. Gale gave thanks for the new blessing that had that day fallen on his friend’s house.
It is impossible to follow David Bushnell in his many journeys to the iron furnaces of Salisbury, in the spring and early summer of 1776, during which time the entire country was aroused and astir from the removal of the American army from Boston to New York; and our friends at Saybrook were busy as bees from morning till night, in getting ready perfect machines for duty.
David Bushnell’s strength proved insufficient to navigate one of his Turtles in the tidal waters of the Sound, and his brother Ezra learned to do it most perfectly.
In the latter end of June, the British fleet, which had sailed out of Boston harbor so ingloriously on the 17th of March, for Halifax, there to await re-inforcements, appeared in waters adjacent to New York.