Israel Potter | Page 6

and supplied with every necessary. At the end of a
week, while unsophisticated Israel was sitting in the maintop, thinking what should befall
him in Holland, and wondering what sort of unsettled, wild country it was, and whether
there was any deer-shooting or beaver-trapping there, lo! an American brig, bound from
Piscataqua to Antigua, comes in sight. The American took them aboard, and conveyed
them safely to her port. There Israel shipped for Porto Rico; from thence, sailed to
Eustatia.
Other rovings ensued; until at last, entering on board a Nantucket ship, he hunted the
leviathan off the Western Islands and on the coast of Africa, for sixteen months; returning
at length to Nantucket with a brimming hold. From that island he sailed again on another

whaling voyage, extending, this time, into the great South Sea. There, promoted to be
harpooner, Israel, whose eye and arm had been so improved by practice with his gun in
the wilderness, now further intensified his aim, by darting the whale-lance; still,
unwittingly, preparing himself for the Bunker Hill rifle.
In this last voyage, our adventurer experienced to the extreme all the hardships and
privations of the whaleman's life on a long voyage to distant and barbarous
waters--hardships and privations unknown at the present day, when science has so greatly
contributed, in manifold ways, to lessen the sufferings, and add to the comforts of
seafaring men. Heartily sick of the ocean, and longing once more for the bush, Israel,
upon receiving his discharge at Nantucket at the end of the voyage, hied straight back for
his mountain home.
But if hopes of his sweetheart winged his returning flight, such hopes were not destined
to be crowned with fruition. The dear, false girl was another's.

CHAPTER III
.
ISRAEL GOES TO THE WARS; AND REACHING BUNKER HILL IN TIME TO BE
OF SERVICE THERE, SOON AFTER IS FORCED TO EXTEND HIS TRAVELS
ACROSS THE SEA INTO THE ENEMY'S LAND.
Left to idle lamentations, Israel might now have planted deep furrows in his brow. But
stifling his pain, he chose rather to plough, than be ploughed. Farming weans man from
his sorrows. That tranquil pursuit tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations. There, too, in
mother earth, you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see the planting
torn up by the roots. But if wandering in the wilderness, and wandering upon the waters,
if felling trees, and hunting, and shipwreck, and fighting with whales, and all his other
strange adventures, had not as yet cured poor Israel of his now hopeless passion, events
were at hand for ever to drown it.
It was the year 1774. The difficulties long pending between the colonies and England
were arriving at their crisis. Hostilities were certain. The Americans were preparing
themselves. Companies were formed in most of the New England towns, whose members,
receiving the name of minute-men, stood ready to march anywhere at a minute's warning.
Israel, for the last eight months, sojourning as a laborer on a farm in Windsor, enrolled
himself in the regiment of Colonel John Patterson of Lenox, afterwards General
Patterson.
The battle of Lexington was fought on the 18th of April, 1775; news of it arrived in the
county of Berkshire on the 20th about noon. The next morning at sunrise, Israel swung
his knapsack, shouldered his musket, and, with Patterson's regiment, was on the march,
quickstep, towards Boston.
Like Putnam, Israel received the stirring tidings at the plough. But although not less
willing than Putnam to fly to battle at an instant's notice, yet--only half an acre of the
field remaining to be finished--he whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening
to one duty, he would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the British,
for a little practice' sake, he applied the gad to his oxen. From the field of the farmer, he
rushed to that of the soldier, mingling his blood with his sweat. While we revel in
broadcloth, let us not forget what we owe to linsey-woolsey.

With other detachments from various quarters, Israel's regiment remained encamped for
several days in the vicinity of Charlestown. On the seventeenth of June, one thousand
Americans, including the regiment of Patterson, were set about fortifying Bunker's Hill.
Working all through the night, by dawn of the following day, the redoubt was thrown up.
But every one knows all about the battle. Suffice it, that Israel was one of those
marksmen whom Putnam harangued as touching the enemy's eyes. Forbearing as he was
with his oppressive father and unfaithful love, and mild as he was on the farm, Israel was
not the same at Bunker Hill. Putnam had enjoined the men to aim at the officers; so Israel
aimed between the golden epaulettes, as, in