Huh. Good luck with that. Rubio claimed to believe in God, though how anyone could these days was a mystery to me. He’d love this relic of another age, but to share it, I’d need a story of where it came from. Maybe say I found it in the mews house? He’d buy that, and see reason to keep it secret.

“We left the wharf at precisely 25 m. of Two O.C., on the 22nd day of Feb. 1849, the birthday of the father of our glorious union. I felt a little anxious at starting for sea, the weather looking as it did, winds S.E., and every indication of a storm. We sailed down the harbor while our friends cheered us and we answering heartily back now and then with a shot from our little cannonade, which made the echoes fly.”

But what wharf? What harbor? I thought of evacuees leaving Manhattan. Were they seen off with such ceremony by their less frightened friends, who fully expected everyone to return, once the hysteria died down?

“And though our spirits were saddened and gloomy, yet we all were looking anxiously ahead, hoping to reap a golden reward for the risks we were to run.”

Waves and water. Storms. A long and difficult voyage. Like an old romance. Facing terrible risks for the sake of a ‘golden reward.’ Say, like the risk I was taking, keeping valuables back from my den. This guy was whispering to me down the years. ’Cept I had no travel plans, not any time soon. If I kept the papers, I might use the local documents but surely sell the tickets. Wherever this Arkadia was, what would I do there, with no friends or relatives to take me in? Couldn’t just throw yourself on the mercy of strangers, not in this world.

“We had duplicates of everything likely to be carried away, together with canvas and rigging sufficient for five years. We also had a very bountiful provision list: enough in store for at least eighteen months if we should get no fresh or put in even in that time; also about 300 gals. of water, liquors, wines, medicines, arms & ammunition, etc. I felt confident and had no fear of the result if a storm did occur.”

I tried to imagine not being able to go outside the den for eighteen months. A long time to be self-sufficient. Or to be cooped up with the same people, whose company you hadn’t chosen.

“Our Capt. thought it prudent to come to anchor off Fort Diamond and wait to see what the morning would show. After that, we piped all hands forward to the cabin and cast lots for the berths, after which each one commenced arranging his sleeping apartment. I drew one of the worst, but by paying one dollar in hand, took the 2nd best in the cabin.”