Part 5

"Good boy! You may go in and have your supper," said Mr. Bushnell, patting him on the back, just as he had done when he returned from college with his first award.

As for Madam Bushnell, she smiled down upon Lady Fenwick and did her great reverence in her heart, while she said to the boat-builder:

"David, dear, wait a few minutes, and I'll give you something nice and warm for your supper. Your father, Ezra and I had ours long ago."

That night Mr. Bushnell did not lie awake to listen for the stealthy stepping in the upper room. He slept all the sounder, because he had at last seen one stroke of honest work, as he called it, as the result of his endeavors to help David on in life.

As for David himself, he went to sleep, saying in his heart: "It is a good stepping-stone at least;" which conclusion grew into form in sleep, and shaped itself into a mighty monster, that bored itself under mountains, and, after taking a nap, roused and shook itself so mightily that the mountain flew into fragments high in air.

If you go, to-day, into the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, you will see on its left bank the old town of Saybrook, on its right the slightly younger town of Lyme, and you will have passed by, without having been very much interested in it, an island lying just within the shelter of either bank.

In the summer of 1774 a band of fishermen put up a reel upon the island, on which to wind their seine. Over the reel they built a roof to protect it from the rains. With the exception of the reel, there was no building upon the island. A large portion of the land was submerged at the highest tides, and in the spring freshets, and was covered with a generous growth of salt grass, in which a small army might readily find concealment.

The little fishing band was now sadly broken and lessened by one of the Washingtonian demands upon Brother Jonathan. For reasons that he did not choose to give, David Bushnell joined this band of fishermen in the summer of 1775. Gradually he made himself, by purchase, the owner of the larger part of the reel and seine. In a few weeks' time he had induced his brother Ezra to become as much of a fisherman as he himself was.

As the days went by, the brothers fairly haunted this island. They gave it a name for their own use, and, early in the day-dawn of many a morning, they pulled the Lady Fenwick wearily up the Pochaug, to snatch a few winks of sleep at home, before the sun should fairly rise and call them to their daily tasks, for David assumed to help Ezra on the farm, even as Ezra helped him on the island.

The two brothers owned the reel and the seine before the end of the month of August in 1775. As soon as they became the sole owners, they procured lumber and enclosed the reel, and very seldom took down the seine from its great round perch; they used it just often enough to allay any suspicion as to their real object in becoming owners of the fishing implements.

About that time a story grew into general belief that the tomb of Lady Fenwick was haunted. Boatmen, passing in the stillness of the solemn night hours, asserted that they heard strange noises issuing from the hill, just where the lady slept in her lonely burial-place. The sounds seemed to emerge from the earth, and timid men passed up the river with every inch of sail set to catch the breeze, lest the solemn thud should sound, that a hundred persons were willing to testify had been heard by each and every one of them, at some hour of the night, coming from the tomb.

One evening in late September, the two brothers started forth as usual, nominally to "go fishing." As they stepped down the bank, Mr. Bushnell followed them.

"Boys," said he, "it's an uncommon fine night on the water. I believe I'll take a seat in your boat, with your permission. I used to like fishing myself when I was young and spry."

"And leave mother alone!" objected David.

"She's been out with me many a night on the Sound. She's brave, and won't mind a good south-west wind, such as I dare say breaks in on the shore this minute. Go and call her."

And so the family started forth to go fishing.

This was a night the two brothers had been looking forward to during weeks of earnest labor, and now--well, it could not be helped, and there was not a moment in which to hold counsel.

Mr. Bushnell had planned this surprise early in the day, but had not told his wife until evening. Then he announced his determination to "learn what all these midnight and all-night absences did mean."

As the Lady Fenwick came out from the Pochaug River into the Sound, the south-west wind brought crested waves to shore. The wind was increasing, and, to the great relief of David and Ezra, Mr. Bushnell gave the order to turn back into the river.

The next day David Bushnell asked his mother whether or not she knew the reason his father had proposed to go out with them the night before.

"Yes, David," was the reply, "I do."

"Will you tell me?"

"He does not believe that you and Ezra go fishing at all."

"What do you believe about it, mother?"

"I believe in _you_, David, and that when you have anything to tell to me, I shall be glad to listen."

"And father does not trust me yet; I am sorry," said David, turning away. And then, as by a sudden impulse, he returned and said:

"If you can trust _me_ so entirely, mother, _we_ can trust _you_. To-day, two gentlemen will be here. You will please be ready to go out in the boat with us whenever they come."

"Where to?"

"To my fishing ground, mother."

The strangers arrived, and were presented to Mrs. Bushnell as Dr. Gale and his friend, Mr. Franklin.

At three of the clock the little family set off in the row-boat. Down at Pochaug harbor, there was Mr. Bushnell hallooing to them to be taken on board.

"I saw my family starting on an unknown voyage," he remarked, as the boat approached the shore as nearly as it could, while he waded out to meet it.

"Ah, Friend Gale, is that you?" he said, as with dripping feet he stepped in. "And whither bound?" he added, dropping into a seat.

"For the far and distant land of the unknown, Mr. Bushnell. Permit me to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Franklin."

"Franklin! Franklin!" exclaimed Mr. Bushnell, eyeing the stranger a little rudely. "_Doctor Benjamin Franklin_, _if you please_, Benjamin Gale!" he corrected, to the utter amazement of the party.

The oars missed the stroke, caught it again, and, for a minute, poor Dr. Franklin was confused by the sudden announcement that he existed at all, and, in particular, in that small boat on the sea.

"Yes, sir, even so," responded Dr. Gale, cheerfully adding, "and we're going down to see the new fishing tackle your son is going to catch the enemy's ships with."

"Fishing tackle! Enemy's ships! Why, David _is_ the laziest man in all Saybrook town. He does nothing with his first summer but fish, fish all night long! The only stroke of honest work I've _ever_ known him to do was to build this boat we're in."

During this time the brothers were pulling with a will for the island.

Arrived there, the boat was drawn up on the sand, the seine-house unlocked, and, when the light of day had been let into it, fishing-reel and seine had disappeared, and, in the language of Doctor Benjamin Gale, this is what they found therein:

THE AMERICAN TURTLE.

"The body, when standing upright, in the position in which it is navigated, has the nearest resemblance to the two upper shells of the tortoise, joined together. It is seven and a half feet long, and six feet high. The person who navigates it enters at the top. It has a brass top or cover which receives the person's head, as he sits on a seat, and is fastened on the inside by screws.

"On this brass head are fixed eight glasses, viz: two before, two on each side, one behind, and one to look out upwards. On the same brass head are fixed two brass tubes to admit fresh air when requisite, and a ventilator at the side, to free the machine from the air rendered unfit for respiration.

"On the inside is fixed a barometer, by which he can tell the depth he is under water; a compass by which he knows the course he steers. In the barometer, and on the needles of the compass, is fixed fox-fire--that is, wood that gives light in the dark. His ballast consists of about nine hundred-weight of lead, which he carries at the bottom and on the outside of the machine, part of which is so fixed as he can let run down to the bottom, and serves as an anchor by which he can ride _ad libitum_.

"He has a sounding lead fixed at the bow, by which he can take the depth of water under him, and a forcing-pump by which he can free the machine at pleasure, and can rise above water, and again immerge, as occasion requires.

"In the bow he has a pair of oars fixed like the two opposite arms of a windmill, with which he can row forward, and, turning them the opposite way, row the machine backward; another pair, fixed upon the same model, with which he can row the machine round, either to the right or left; and a third by which he can row the machine either up or down; all of which are turned by foot, like a spinning wheel. The rudder by which he steers he manages by hand, within-board.

"All these shafts which pass through the machine are so curiously fixed as not to admit any water.

"The magazine for the powder is carried on the hinder part of the machine, without-board, and so contrived that, when he comes under the side of a ship, he rubs down the side until he comes to the keel, and a hook so fixed as that when it touches the keel it raises a spring which frees the magazine from the machine, and fastens it to the side of the ship; at the same time it draws a pin, which sets the watch-work a-going, which, at a given time, springs the lock, and an explosion ensues."

Thus wrote Dr. Benjamin Gale to Silas Deane, member of Congress at Philadelphia. His letter bears the date November 9, 1775, and, after describing the wonderful machine, he adds:

"I well know the man. Lately he has conducted matters with the greatest secrecy, both for the personal safety of the navigator, and to produce the greater astonishment to those against whom it is designed; and, you may call me a visionary, an enthusiast, or what you please, I do insist upon it that I believe the inspiration of the Almighty has given him understanding for this very purpose and design."

When the seine-house door had been fastened open, when Dr. Franklin and Dr. Gale had gone within, followed by the two brothers, Mr. Bushnell and his wife stood without looking in, and wondering in their hearts what the sight they saw could mean; for, of the intent or purpose of the curious, oaken, iron-bound, many-paddled, brass-headed, window-lighted thing, they, it must be remembered, knew nothing. It must mean something extraordinary, of course, or Doctor Franklin would never have thought it worth his while to come out of his way to behold it.

"Father," whispered Mrs. Bushnell, "it's the _fish_ David has been all summer catching."

"Fish!" ejaculated Mr. Bushnell, "it's more like a turtle."

"That's good!" spoke up Dr. Gale, from within. "Turtle it shall be."

"It is the first _submarine_ boat ever made--a grand idea, wrought into substance," slowly pronounced Dr. Franklin; "let us have it forth into the river."

"And run the risk of discovery?" suggested David, pleased that his work approved itself to the man of science.

"We meant to try it last night, but failed," said Ezra Bushnell.

"There, now, father, don't you wish we had staid at home?" whispered Mrs. Bushnell.

"No!" growled the father. "They would have killed themselves getting it down alone."

He stepped within and laid his hand on the machine, saying:

"Anna, you keep watch, and, if any boat heaves in sight, let us know. Does the Turtle snap, David?" he questioned, putting forth his hand and laying it cautiously upon the animal.

"Never, until the word is given," replied the son, and then ten strong hands applied the strength within them to lift the curious piece of mechanism and carry it without.

The seine-house was close to the river-bank, and in a half-hour's time the American Turtle was in its native element.

Madam Anna Bushnell kept strict watch over the shores and the river, but not a sail slid into sight, not an oar troubled the waters of the tide, as it tossed back the tumble of the down-flowing river.

It was a hard duty for the mother to perform; for, at a glance toward the bank, she saw David step into the machine, and the brass cover close down over his head. She felt suffocating fears for him, as, at last, the thing began to move into the stream. She saw it go out, she saw it slowly sinking, going down out of sight, until even the brass head was submerged.

Then she forsook her post, and hastened to the bank to keep watch with the rest.

One, two, three minutes went by. The men looked at the surface of the waters, at each other, grew thoughtful, pale; the mother gasped and dropped on the salt grass, fainting; the brother gave to Lady Fenwick a running push, bounded on board, and clutched the oars to row swiftly to the spot where David went down.

Mr. Bushnell filled his hat with water, and sprinkled the pale face in the sedge.

"_There! there!_" cried Dr. Franklin, with distended eyes and eager outlook.

"_Where? where?_" ejaculated Dr. Gale, striving to take into vision the whole surface of the river, at a glance.

"It's all right! He's coming up _plump_!" shouted Ezra, from his boat, as he rowed with speed for the spot where a brass tube was rising, sun-burnished, from the Connecticut.

Presently the brass head, with its very small windows, emerged, even the oaken sides were rising,--and Mr. Bushnell was greeting the returning consciousness of his wife with the words:

"It's all right, mother. David is safe."

"Don't let him know," were the first words she spoke, "that his own mother was so faithless as to doubt!"

And now, paddle, paddle, toward the river-bank came the Turtle, David Bushnell's head rising out of its shell, proud confidence shining forth from his eyes, as feet and hands busied themselves in navigating the boat that had lived for months in his brain, and now was living, in very substance, under his control.

As he neared the bank a shout of acclamation greeted him.

He reached the island, was fairly dragged forth from his seat, and carried up to the spot where his mother sat, trying to overcome every trace of past doubt and fear.

"Now," said Dr. Gale, "let us give thanks unto Him who hath given this youth understanding to do this great work."

With bared heads and devout hearts the thanksgiving went upward, and thereafter a perfect shower of questions pelted David Bushnell concerning his device to blow up ships: _how_ he came to think of it at all--_where_ he got this idea and that as to its construction--to all of which he simply said:

"_You'll find your answer in the prayer you've just offered!_"

"But," said practical Mr. Bushnell, "the Lord did not send you money to buy oak and iron and brass, did he?"

"Yes," returned David, "by the hand of my good friend, Dr. Gale. To him belongs half the victory."

"Pshaw! pshaw!" impatiently uttered the doctor. "I tell you it is _no such thing_! I only advanced My Lady here," turning to Madam Bushnell, "a little money, on her promise to pay me at some future time. I'm mightily ashamed _now_ that I took the promise at all. Madam Bushnell, I'll never take a penny of it back again, _never_, as long as I live. I _will_ have a little of the credit of this achievement, and no one shall hinder me."

"How is that, mother?" questioned Mr. Bushnell. "_You_ borrow money and not tell me!" and David and Ezra looked at her.

"I--I--" stammered forth the woman, "I only _guessed_ that David was doing something that he wanted money for, and told Dr. Gale if he gave it to him I would repay it. Do you _care_, father?"

Before he had a chance to get an answer in, David Bushnell stepped forward, and, taking the little figure of his mother in his arms, kissed her sharply, and walked away, to give some imaginary attention to the Turtle at the bank.

"It is a fair land to work for!" spoke up Doctor Franklin, looking about upon river and earth and sea; "worthy it is of our highest efforts; of our lives, even, if need be. God give us strength as our need _shall_ be."

With many a tug and pull and hearty heave-ho, the Turtle was hoisted up the bank and safely drawn into the seine-house. The door was locked, and Lady Fenwick's tomb gave forth no sound that night.

Doctor Franklin went his way to Boston. Doctor Gale returned to Killingworth and his waiting patients, and the Bushnells, father, mother and sons, having put the two gentlemen on the Saybrook shore, went down the river into the Sound, along its edge, and up the small Pochaug to their own home by the sycamore tree.

Mr. Bushnell and Ezra did the rowing that night. David's white hands had, somehow, a new radiance in them for his father's eyes, and did not seem exactly fitted for rowing just a common boat and every-day oars.

The young man sat in the stern, beside his mother, one arm around her waist, and the other clasped closely between her little palms, while, now and then, her finding eyes would penetrate his consciousness with a glance that seemed to say, "I always believed in you, David."

* * * * *

If you go to-day and stand upon the site of the old fort, built at the mouth of the Connecticut River, in the year 1635, by Lion Gardiner, once engineer in the service of the Prince of Orange, and search the waters up and down for the island on which David Bushnell built the American Turtle in 1775, you will not find it.

If you seek the oldest inhabitant of Saybrook, and ask him to point out its locality, he will say, with boyhood's fondness for olden play-grounds in his tone:

"Ah, yes! It is _Poverty_ Island that you mean. It used to be there, but spring freshets and beating storms have washed it away."

The unexpected visit of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, to see the machine David Bushnell was building, gave new force to that young gentleman's confidence in his own powers of invention.

He worked with increased energy and hope to perfect boat and magazine, that he might do good service with them before winter should fall on the waters of the Massachusetts Bay, where the hostile ships were lying.

At last came the day wherein the final trial-trip should be made. The pumps built by Mr. Doolittle, but not according to order, had failed once, but new ones had been supplied, and everything seemed propitious. David and Ezra, with their mother in the boat, rowed once more to Poverty Island. "On the morrow the great venture should begin," they said.

The time was mid-October. The forests had wrapped the cooling coast in warmth of coloring that was soft and many-hued as the shawls of Cashmere, while the sun-made fringe of goldenrod fell along the shores of river and island and sea.

Mrs. Bushnell's heart beat proudly above the fond affection that could not suppress a shiver, as the Turtle was pushed into the stream. She could not help seeing that David made a line fast from the seine-house to his boat ere he went down. They watched many minutes to see him rise to the surface, but he did not.

"Mother," said Ezra, "the pump for forcing water out when he wants to rise don't work, and we must pull him in. He feared it."

As he spoke the words he laid hold on the line, and began gently to draw on it.

"Hurry! hurry! _do!_" cried Mrs. Bushnell, seizing the same line close to the water's edge, and drawing on it with all her strength. She was vexed that Ezra had not told her the danger in the beginning, and she "knew _very_ well that SHE would not have stood there and let David die of suffocation, in that horrid, brass-topped coffin!"

"Hold, mother!" cried Ezra; "pull gently, or the line may part on some barnacled rock if it gets caught."

Nevertheless, Mrs. Bushnell pulled in as fast as she could.

The tide was sweeping up the river, and a shark, in hard chase after a school of menhaden, swam steadily up, with fin out of water.

Just as the shark reached the place, he made a dive, and the rope parted!

Mrs. Bushnell screamed a word or two of the terror that had seized her. Ezra looked up, amazed to find the rope coming in so readily, hand over hand. He cast it down, sprang to the boat, and pushed off to the possible rescue, only to find that the Turtle was making for the river-bank instead of the island.

He rowed to the spot. His brother, for the first time in his life, was overcome with disappointment and disinclined to talk.

"I--I," said David, wiping his forehead. "I grew tired, and made for shore. The tide was taking me up fast."

"Did you let go the line?" questioned Ezra.

"Yes."

"The pump works all right, then?"

"Yes."

"You've frightened mother terribly."

"Have I? I never thought. I _forgot_ she was here. Let us get back, then;" and the two brothers, without speaking a word, rowed down against the sweep of tide, the great Turtle in tow.

The three went home, still keeping a silence broken only by briefest possible question and answer.

The golden October night fell upon the old town. Pochaug River, its lone line of silver gathered in many a stretch of interval into which the moon looked calmly down, lay on the land for many a mile.

Again and again, during the evening, David Bushnell went out from the house and stood silently on the rough bridge that crossed the river by the door.

"Let David alone, mother," urged Ezra, as she was about to follow him on one occasion. "He is thinking out something, and is better alone."

That which the young man was thinking at the moment was, that he wished the moon would hurry and go down. He longed for darkness.

The night was growing cold. Frost was in the air.

As he stood on the rough logs, a post-rider, hurrying by with letters, came up.

"Holloa there!" he called aloud, not liking the looks of the man on the bridge.

"It's I,--David Bushnell, Joe Downs! You can ride by in safety," he responded, ringing out one of his merriest chimes of laughter at the very idea of being taken for a highwayman.

"I've news," said Joe; "want it?"

"Yes."

Joe Downs opened his pocket, and, by the light of the moon, found the letter he had referred to.

"Dr. Gale told me not to fail to put this into your hands as I came by. I should kind o' judge, by the way he _spoke_, that the continent couldn't get along very well _'thout you_, if I hadn't known a thing or two. Howsomever, here's the letter, and I've to jog on to Guilford afore the moon goes down. So good-night."

"Good night, Joe. Thank you for stopping," said David, going into the house.

"Were you expecting that letter, David?" questioned Mr. Bushnell, when it had been read.

"No, sir. It is from Dr. Gale. He asks me to hasten matters as far as possible, but a new contrivance will have to go in before I am ready."

"There! _That's_ what troubles him," thought both Mrs. Bushnell and Ezra, and they exchanged glances of sympathy and satisfaction--and the little household went to sleep, quite care-free that night.

At two of the clock, with nearly noiseless tread, David Bushnell left the house.

As the door closed his mother moved uneasily in her sleep, and awoke with the sudden consciousness that something uncanny had happened. She looked from a window and saw, by the light of a low-lying moon, that David had gone out.

Without awakening her husband she protected herself with needful clothing, and, wrapped about in one of the curious plaid blankets of mingled blue and white, adorned with white fringe, that are yet to be found in the land, she followed into the night.