For Love of Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

conditions—and tidying up the space. Although homecoming meant as much to him as it did to any man aboard, he would not be leaving Boston right away. Duty compelled him to spend the balance of the day on Long Wharf. The process of off-loading the cargo required his full attention, to be followed by settlement of wages for his crew after they had the hogsheads of rum and molasses stacked in a Cutler warehouse. And he would need to meet with his father, if his father were in
Boston this day; or, if he were not, with George Hunt, the able Bostonbased administrator of Cutler & Sons. Only when these and myriad other details had been checked off would Richard board a packet for Hingham.
    As it turned out, Thomas Cutler was not present on Long Wharf. After a quick dinner alone at McMurray’s, a favorite alehouse located across from Faneuil Hall, Richard was informed by George Hunt that a boat had just departed for Hingham. Before she sailed, Hunt had requested her master to notify the Cutler family of Lavinia ’s arrival. He also informed Richard that another packet should be on her way in by now and would make the return trip when Richard was ready to leave. Which he finally was, four hours later.
    The passage southeast to Hingham provided a welcome relief from shipboard responsibility. He sat alone, propped up against the mast, enjoying the simple pleasures of a fresh southwesterly breeze on his face and the spectacle of a late summer sun casting a brilliant golden sheen over the long string of Boston Harbor islands that both defined and protected Hingham Bay. Richard let his mind wander as he watched one picturesque gem after another pass by to larboard, the sight of each island evoking a distant though clear memory. In their youth, he and his brother Will had sailed out to these islands in search of Indian artifacts and ruins to explore, or wild berries and shellfish to bring home for supper.
    One island in particular, once owned by a prominent Hingham Tory named Elisha Leavitt, had been their favorite. Grape Island was an easy row from the Hingham docks. The boys could swim in its sheltered cove when the tide was up or, when it was low, dig for clams in the gravelly sand or wade into the shallows to wrest mussels from the barnacleinfested rocks. Years ago it had also been the scene of a local scandal, one that made Richard smile even to this day. Late one summer evening, as a warm and muggy mist crept over the colony of Massachusetts, Will Cutler had rowed his small catboat in toward the Hingham docks with pretty Sarah Fearing sitting demurely on the after thwart. They had been becalmed out in the bay, Will had told two sets of worried parents, and he had had to battle for hours against a vicious ebb tide threatening to carry them all the way to Hull Gut, a potentially dangerous gap between Peddocks Island and Pemberton Point that could suck the unwary out of Hingham Bay and into the open Atlantic. They were lucky to be alive, he had testified, and would not have made it home had the tide not
gone slack just as they were about to be swept away. His explanation stood, for the moment, for indeed it had been a day of fluky winds and an unusually strong spring tide. But the jig was up the next morning when a local fisherman with perhaps an ax to grind informed Thomas Cutler and, worse, Nathan Fearing that during the previous evening, as he rowed his skiff into the harbor, he had spotted Will’s boat hauled high up on the beach on the north side of Grape Island, its passengers nowhere to be found amidst the low-lying brush. Richard had never seen his father so angry. Whether his rage was inspired by what Will had allegedly done—whenever Richard put the eternal question to him, Will had responded with a wink and a grin—or by the embarrassment he had caused the Cutler family, Richard had never known for certain.
    Will Cutler. A decade had vanished since he had been impressed by the Royal Navy off Marblehead,