The rest of us, silent around the fire, could hear Phoebe telling small, homely things: how Nason’s mother had a felon on the third finger of her left hand from jabbing herself with the scissors, but was otherwise well; how the dog Ginger had eleven puppies, and two had been saved, both black with white waistcoats: how six barrels of herring had been salted for fear the winter would be a hard one; how she had brought him a woolen shirt from his mother and woolen stockings from his sister Jane, and a package of needles, yarn and darning cotton from herself.

“It doesn’t seem quite right, Steven,” we heard her say, “for you to rush off like this before I have a chance to do your mending, even.”

Nason laughed. “You’ll have enough of that, Phoebe, before you’re through.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s generally something to be thankful for. Thank goodness I got here when I did! Thank goodness I didn’t get here two hours later.”

What the others thought, I had no way of knowing, for not even Cap Huff had a word to say; but what I thought was that we, too, had more to be thankful for than I had hitherto realized.

XXIX

PHOEBE’S INFORMATION proved to be as accurate as it had been welcome, and in two days’ time Skenesboro was not only alive with Connecticutters; but from a distance the little row-galley and two of the gundelos had the appearance of pale bee-hives a-swarm with bees. Men clung and crawled on them from bulwarks to keelson, plunking the new oakum into them with calking irons Steven Nason had made in Skene’s old iron-foundry.

General Waterbury, attended by Wynkoop, came down among us, a gray-headed man with gray sidewhiskers, walking with his left shoulder thrust a little forward, as if pushing into a gale of wind. He was as old as my father, nearly; and from the way he eyed Wynkoop, he was no more favorably impressed by this fresh-water admiral than the rest of us had been. I could hear Wynkoop talking and talking, in that strange, half-foreign language of his, telling about gundelos, and about some mighty brave fighting he had done in the last war against the French.

It seemed to me that Waterbury’s face, as he listened, grew grayer and grayer; but he said nothing: just went pushing ahead, crab-like, his eyes darting quick glances at the partly finished vessels.

There was a sour look about Waterbury’s mouth that should have been a warning to Wynkoop; but being the sort of man he was, Wynkoop talked on and on, making no effort to understand the things he saw.

Now I don’t know whether Waterbury sent for Arnold, sensing that there would be grievous trouble and delay unless Wynkoop was removed entirely from the neighborhood, or whether Steven Nason, on reporting to Arnold, had told him how Wynkoop had insisted that only gundelos be built and so spurred him to quick action. The fact remains that Waterbury was scarcely settled in Skene’s big house when a human bombshell burst in the middle of our shipbuilding.