Johnny Tremain (25 page)

Sam Adams said nothing for a moment. He trusted these men about him as he trusted no one else in the world.

'No. That time is past. I will work for war: the complete freedom of these colonies from any European power. We can have that freedom only by fighting for it. God grant we fight soon. For ten years we've tried this and we've tried that. We've tried to placate them and they to placate us. Gentlemen, you know it has not worked. I will not work for peace. "Peace, peace—and there is no peace." But I will, in Philadelphia, play a cautious part—not throw all my cards on the table—oh, no. But nevertheless I will work for but one thing. War—bloody and terrible death and destruction. But out of it shall come such a country as was never seen on this earth before. We will fight...'

There was a heavy footstep across the floor of the shop below. Rab leaped to the ladder's head.

'James Otis,' he reported to the men standing about Adams.

'Well,' said Sam Adams, a little crossly, 'no one needs stay and listen to
him.
He shot his bolt years ago. Still talking about the natural rights of man—and the glories of the British Empire! You and I, John, had as well go home and get a good night's sleep before leaving at dawn tomorrow.'

Otis pulled his bulk up the ladder. If no one was glad to see him, at least no one was so discourteous as to leave. Mr. Otis was immediately shown every honor, given a comfortable armchair and a tankard of punch. Seemingly he was not in a talkative mood tonight. The broad, ruddy, good-natured face turned left and right, nodding casually to his friends, taking it for granted that he was still a great man among them, instead of a milestone they all believed they had passed years before.

He sniffed at his punch and sipped a little.

'Sammy,' he said to Sam Adams, 'my coming interrupted something you were saying..."We will fight," you had got that far.'

'Why, yes. That's no secret.'

'For what will we fight?'

'To free Boston from these infernal redcoats and...'

'No,' said Otis. 'Boy, give me more punch. That's not enough reason for going into a war. Did any occupied city ever have better treatment than we've had from the British? Has one rebellious newspaper been stopped—one treasonable speech? Where are the firing squads, the jails jammed with political prisoners? What about the gallows for you, Sam Adams, and you, John Hancock? It has never been set up. I hate those infernal British troops spread all over my town as much as you do. Can't move these days without stepping on a soldier. But we are not going off into a civil war merely to get them out of Boston. Why are we going to fight? Why, why?'

There was an embarrassed silence. Sam Adams was the acknowledged ringleader. It was for him to speak now.

'We will fight for the rights of Americans. England cannot take our money away by taxes.'

'No, no. For something more important than the pocketbooks of our American citizens.'

Rab said, 'For the rights of Englishmen—everywhere.'

'Why stop with Englishmen?' Otis was warming up. He had a wide mouth, crooked and generous. He settled back in his chair and then he began to talk. It was such talk as Johnny had never heard before. The words surged up through the big body, flowed out of the broad mouth. He never raised his voice, and he went on and on. Sometimes Johnny felt so intoxicated by the mere sound of the words that he hardly followed the sense. That soft, low voice flowed over him: submerged him.

'...For men and women and children all over the world,' he said. 'You were right, you tall, dark boy, for even as we shoot down the British soldiers we are fighting for rights such as they will be enjoying a hundred years from now.

'...There shall be no more tyranny. A handful of men cannot seize power over thousands. A man shall choose who it is shall rule over him.

'...The peasants of France, the serfs of Russia. Hardly more than animals now. But because we fight, they shall see freedom like a new sun rising in the west. Those natural rights God has given to every man, no matter how humble...' He smiled suddenly and said '...or crazy,' and took a good pull at his tankard.

'...The battle we win over the worst in England shall benefit the best in England. How well are they over there represented when it comes to taxes? Not very well. It will be better for them when we have won this war.

'Will French peasants go on forever pulling off their caps and saying "Oui, Monsieur," when the gold coaches run down their children? They will not. Italy. And all those German states. Are they nothing but soldiers? Will no one show them the rights of good citizens? So we hold up our torch—and do not forget it was lighted upon the fires of England—and we will set it as a new sun to lighten a world...'

Sam Adams, anxious to get that good night's sleep before starting next day for Philadelphia, was smiling slightly, nodding his gray head, seeming to agree. He was bored. It does not matter, he was thinking, what James Otis says these days—sane or crazy.

Joseph Warren's fair, responsive face was aflame. The torch Otis had been talking about seemed reflected in his eyes.

'We are lucky men,' he murmured, 'for we have a cause worth dying for. This honor is not given to every generation.'

'Boy,' said Otis to Johnny, 'fill my tankard.'

It was not until he had drained it and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand that he spoke again. All sat silently waiting for him. He had, and not for the first time, cast a spell upon them.

'They say,' he began again, 'my wits left me after I got hit on the head by that customs official. That's what you think, eh, Mr. Sam Adams?'

'Oh, no, no, indeed, Mr. Otis.'

'Some of us will give our wits,' he said, 'some of us all our property. Heh, John Hancock, did you hear that?
Property
—that hurts, eh? To give one's silver wine-coolers, one's coach and four, and the gold buttons off one's sprigged satin waistcoats?'

Hancock looked him straight in the face and Johnny had never before liked him so well.

'I am ready,' he said. 'I can get along without all that.'

'You, Paul Revere, you'll give up that silvercraft you love. God made you to make silver, not war.'

Revere smiled. 'There's a time for the casting of silver and a time for the casting of cannon. If that's not in the Bible, it should be.'

'Doctor Warren, you've a young family. You know quite well, if you get killed they may literally starve.'

Warren said, 'I've thought of all that long ago.'

'And you, John Adams. You've built up a very nice little law practice, stealing away my clients, I notice. Ah, well, so it goes. Each shall give according to his own abilities, and some'—he turned directly to Rab—'some will give their lives. All the years of their maturity. All the children they never live to have. The serenity of old age. To die so young is more than merely dying; it is to lose so large a part of life.'

Rab was looking straight at Otis. His arms were folded across his chest. His head flung back a little. His lips parted as though he would speak, but he did not.

'Even you, my old friend—my old enemy? How shall I call you, Sam Adams? Even you will give the best you have—a genius for politics. Oh, go to Philadelphia! Pull all the wool, pull all the strings and all the wires. Yes, go, go! And God go with you. We need you, Sam. We must fight this war. You'll play your part—but what it is really about ... you'll never know.'

James Otis was on his feet, his head close against the rafters that cut down into the attic, making it the shape of a tent. Otis put out his arms.

'It is all so much simpler than you think,' he said. He lifted his hands and pushed against the rafters.

'We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills ... we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.'

With a curt nod, he was gone.

Johnny was standing close to Rab. It had frightened him when Mr. Otis had said, 'Some will give their lives,' and looked straight at Rab. Die so that 'a man can stand up.'

Once more Sam Adams had the center of attention. He was again buttoning up his coat, preparing to leave, but first he turned to Revere.

'Now
he
is gone, we can talk a moment about that spy system you think you can organize in Boston.'

Paul Revere, like his friend, Joseph Warren, was still slightly under the spell of James Otis.

'I had not thought about it that way before,' he said, not answering Sam Adams's words. 'You know my father had to flee France because of the tyranny over there. He was only a child. But now, in a way, I'm fighting for that child ... that no frightened lost child ever is sent out a refugee from his own country because of race or religion.' Then he pulled himself together and answered Sam Adams's remarks about the spy system.

That night, when the boys were both in bed, Johnny heard Rab, usually a heavy sleeper, turning and turning.

'Johnny,' he said at last, 'are you awake?'

'Yes.'

'What was it he said?'

'That a man can stand up.'

Rab sighed and stopped turning. In a few moments he was asleep. As often had happened before, it was the younger boy who lay wide-eyed in the darkness.

'That a man can stand up.'

He'd never forget Otis with his hands pushed up against the cramping rafters over his head.

'That a man can stand up'—as simple as that.

And the strange new sun rising in the west. A sun that was to illumine a world to come.

T
HAT FALL
Paul Revere did organize a spy system. Thirty artisans, mostly masters, from all over Boston were the center. Each of these men had workmen and apprentices under him. And these had friends and the friends had friends. So this web of eyes and ears multiplied and multiplied again until a British soldier could hardly say he'd like to swim in Yankee blood or a couple of befuddled young officers draw out a campaign on a tablecloth at the Afric Queen but it was reported. It was noted exactly which regiments were on duty in different parts of Boston and how strong were the earthworks Gage was putting up to protect his men if 'the country should rush in.'

All such news, important and trivial, was carried to the thirty, meeting secretly at the Green Dragon.

It had caused comment that so many leading Whigs had been seen ever and anon converging upon the
Observer's
office. It aroused no comment that thirty men of humbler rank—master workmen like Paul Revere the silversmith, Thomas Crafts the painter, or Chase the distiller—met at the Green Dragon. This old stone inn was owned by the Masons. Most of these men were Masons. So why should they not meet in the proverbial secrecy of their society?

Every time they met, each man swore upon the Bible that these meetings be kept secret. That anything they discovered of British plans should be told only to the four men who were looked upon as the leaders of the Boston Whigs. These were Sam Adams, John Hancock, Doctor Warren, and Doctor Church. Already many others had thought it safer to leave Boston. Anything Johnny picked up he usually reported to Paul Revere, but sometimes to Doctor Warren. He had been assigned his own particular duty. This was to keep sharp track of Colonel Smith and the other officers of the Tenth Regiment who were living at the Afric Queen. As long as Goblin was stabled there, no one was suspicious if Johnny hung about the stables, the yard, and the kitchen. He was on good terms with the British grooms and by great good luck, from the point of view of a spy system, intimate with the Colonel's horse boy, Dove.

'Don't you lose track of that Dove, Johnny,' Paul Revere commanded him, 'for if ever the British march out to attack us a colonel's horse boy might well know something is happening, in advance.'

Every day Johnny knew what orders were given to the Tenth and he knew other boys and men and women and girls were as carefully watching the actions of the other ten regiments in Boston. Lydia, the handsome black laundress at the Queen, extended his own eyes and ears into the very bedrooms of the officers, and often, as he helped her hang up sheets, she would tell him this and that, but nothing of any value until one day she called him out of the stable, where he was grooming Goblin.