by Ron Carter
“Sure?”
“Go on home. She might not come in until tomorrow, or the next day.”
Billy turned to go, and at that instant Matthew started and then his breath constricted, and Billy stopped.
For two full minutes Matthew studied the incoming sails and the cut of the ship. Square sails, squat, square ship, unlike the slim lines of schooners or frigates.
“She might be Dutch,” Matthew said quietly. He was scarcely breathing.
Billy stood staring, unmoving, waiting while minutes passed.
Suddenly Matthew hunched forward and for an instant dropped his telescope from his eye and looked, then raised the scope again. “Her colors are Dutch! Dutch!” he exclaimed. “Red, white, blue! It has to be her.”
Billy turned on his heel and was gone, and Matthew realized it but did not move, standing like a statue waiting for the name on the bow of the ship to come into focus large enough to read.
Minutes became a quarter of an hour, and Matthew waited until he was certain and then exclaimed, “Van Otten! It’s the Van Otten! She might be on it—has to be on it.”
The ship came steadily on, square sails full, blunt bow cutting a wake, and Matthew studied the rail through his telescope, and there were only the seamen, making ready for the pilot boat to meet them and bring them into the harbor. Hawsers were cast, and the pilot boat caught them and turned and began the slow work of bringing the ship through the channel into her dock. Matthew’s eyes did not leave the railing, searching for the figure of a woman, or children, but there were only seamen on the main deck and two officers by the helmsman. He licked dry lips, suddenly fearful.
The pilot boat made her turn and headed for the Lewis Dock, and Matthew ran to it and waited, watching the rail.
Behind him he heard his name and turned, and Billy was there with Margaret and Brigitte and Adam and Prissy, working through the crowd. Matthew turned back and watched as seamen cast their hawsers, and rough hands tied the ship. One man raised the hinged section of railing for the gangplank, and four men moved it forward and lowered it into position, thumping on the dock, and locked it.
Matthew stood rooted, eyes sweeping the rail, and there was no woman there. Then two seamen came with trunks and set them by the gangplank, and suddenly she was there behind them, and she moved forward with the children beside her.
Matthew leaped to the gangplank, and she saw him and her hand flew to her mouth as he raced upward. Then he was on the deck, and he swept her into his arms, and she threw her arms about him and buried her face in his shoulder. She clung to him and he held her with all his strength, and they stood in the warm early-November afternoon sun, eyes closed, lost in each other, aware only that the pain was gone, and they were whole, and they were home.
Selected Bibliography
* * *
Birnbaum, Louis. Red Dawn at Lexington: “If They Mean to Have a War, Let It Begin Here!” Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
Bunting, W. H., comp. Portrait of a Port: Boston, 1852-1914. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Colbert, David, ed. Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of America in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997.
Cutler, Carl C. Queens of the Western Ocean. Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1961.
Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
French, Allen. The Day of Concord and Lexington: The Nineteenth of April, 1775. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1925.
———. General Gage’s Informers. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1932.
Furnas, J. C. The Americans: A Social History of the United States, 1587-1914. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969.
Galvin, John R. The Minute Men: A Compact History of the Defenders of the American Colonies, 1645–1775. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967.
Jobé, Joseph, ed. The Great Age of Sail. Translated by Michael Kelly. New York: Crescent Books, 1967.
Knox, Dudley W. A History of the United States Navy. Revised edition. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948.
Leckie, Robert. George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Miller, Nathan. Sea of Glory: A Naval History of the American Revolution. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1992.
Outhwaite, Leonard. The Atlantic: A History of an Ocean. New York: Coward-McCann, 1957.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Vintage Press, 1991.
———. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812. New York: Vintage Press, 1990.
Acknowledgments
* * *
Richard B. Bernstein, a constitutional historian specializing in the Revolutionary generation, made a tremendous contribution to the historical accuracy of this work, for which the writer is deeply grateful. The staff of the publisher, Bookcraft, most notably Garry Garff, editor, and Jana Erickson, art director, spent many hours immersed in the details of preparing the manuscript for publication. Harriette Abels, consultant and mentor, graced this volume with her wisdom and encouragement and, ultimately, her approval.
And finally, the spirit of those heroes of so long ago seemed to reach across time and touch the words as they formed on the pages.
Without all of these, this volume would have been lacking.