Within the Capes
By
New York
International Association of Newspapers and Authors
1901
Copyright, 1885,
By CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
NORTH RIVER BINDERY CO.
PRINTERS AND BINDERS
NEW YORK
TO HIS FRIEND
ALFRED LEIGHTON HOWE
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER I.
CERTAIN members of Captain Tom Granger’sfamily have asked him, time and time again,why he did not sit down and write an account ofthose things which happened to him during a certainperiod of his life.
These happenings, all agree, are of a nature suchas rarely fall to the lot of any man, crowding, asthey did, one upon the heels of another, so that intwo years’ time more happened to Tom Grangerthan happens to most men in a lifetime.
But Captain Granger has always shaken hishead, and has answered that he was no writer andthat a pen never did fit nicely betwixt his stifffingers, as Mrs. Granger can tell them if they willask her.
Beside this, he has hitherto had his affairs tolook after, so that he may be able to leave behindhim enough of the world’s goods to help his children[2]and his children’s children easily along theroad that he himself found not over smooth.
Now, however, he has given up much of hisbusiness to the care of his sons, who are mostlymen well on in years, with families of their own,and who are discreet in the management of things.Therefore, having much more leisure time upon hishands than he has ever had in his life before, hewill undertake to do as he has been asked, and towrite a plain, straightforward story of his adventures.This he does with much diffidence, for, as Ihave said, he is no very good hand with the penand the ink-horn. The story may be told in arough way; nevertheless, I believe that many ofthose that read it will think well of it, having acertain tenderness for the writer thereof.
I am furthermore inclined to thus take uponmyself the transcribing of the history of thesethings, because that Captain Tom Granger iscoming fast to the ending of his life; and, thoughhis latter days may be warm and sunny, like a lateIndian summer, there are those yet to come in afew years who will not have the chance to hear ofthese things from his own lips. Therefore, as therehas been much gossip about certain adventuresthat befell him, I would rather that they shouldlearn of them under mine own hand than fromhearsay. Truly, things get monstrously twistedin passing from mouth to mouth, and by the timethat the story of these doings has passed downthrough three or four generations, the old gentleman[3]might be turned into a pirate and a murderer,for all that I know, which would be a pretty stateof affairs.
I do not know how it was that Tom Granger gotthe title of captain, for the highest grade that heever reached was that of second mate of the PrivateersmanNancy Hazlewood. However, as noone in Eastcaster ever had held so high a grade ofthe lik