An Embarrassment of Riches (5 page)

The little cottage in its sunny glade of oak and walnut was constructed entirely from the timbers and planks of abducted river craft. Here, for instance, in place of a shutter, was the transom of a flatboat, its very name,
Plain Jane
, visible in faded yellow paint. In place of posts supporting the modest portico were the lateen masts of an half dozen scuttled gundalows, the cleats and running tackle brazenly in place as though they were objects of decoration. The motley clapboards, some red, some green, some white-washed, others varnished or weathered gray, were salvaged from the bulwarks of captured prizes and bore the appellations of their plundered namesakes: the
Goforth
, the
Livonia
, the
Westering Star
, and the pathetic
Child of Destiny
. The vision of a plank inscribed
Megatherium
nailed up amongst them filled me with gall.

But I was also struck by the undeniably charming aspect of this dwelling in the wilderness. Whatever their barbarity, swinishness, or habits of turpitude, one could not help but admire the domestic art evinced by the little cottage. In its dooryard grew a profusion of wild flowers—yellow trout lilies
(Erythronium americanum)
, little white spring-beauties
(Claytonia virginica)
, lovely wood sorrel
(Oxalis montana)
, trailing arbutus
(Epigaea repens)
, red lousewort
(Pedicularis canadensis)
, scarlet columbine
(Aquilegia canadensis)
, cranesbill
(Geranium maculatum
), while three kinds of phlox
(glaberrima, pilosa, maculate)
bloomed in the window boxes. Violet-green bank swallows
(Riparia riparia)
swerved in the afternoon sunlight. Deep in the island's woods, the solitary thrush
(Hylocichla guttata)
lifted his flutelike song. The path to the door was cobbled with flat rocks. Altogether the habitation seemed hardly the den of murderous rascals it was, but the abode of any earnest and humble folk as might be found in the countryside of Suffolk County, New York.

“Look, brother,” said I to Uncle, “a new species of larkspur.”

“Hmmmph,” Uncle replied.

We followed Bilbo up the path. He approached the front door gingerly, then crept to the side, stooped down, and peeked around the paneless window casement.

“Indians,” he explained with a rueful grin. “One can never be too careful in this neck o'the woods. I always fasten a blade of grass twixt the door and jamb. If it's broke, one had better be ready for jack-in-the-box.”

“When were you last molested by redskins?” I inquired, more to ingratiate ourselves with this ruffian than gain an answer.

“One invasion per week is the usual. We are dispatching the brutes like so many wasps in the pantry. Ain't that right, Neddy?”

“Rowf, rowf,” the dwarf said.

“Gentlemen,” Bilbo said, removing his hat and holding open the door, “welcome to our snug harbor.”

We entered. The cottage was as pleasant inside as it was charming without. The furnishings were of surprising gentility, though all stolen, no doubt. The plank floor was covered by an handsome Baghdad rug. A cherrywood breakfront was well stocked with Delft and pewter wares. A stuffed lynx, mounted upon a birch log, snarled beside a ticking clock on the mantelpiece. On the walls were several paintings of the pastoral kind (cows, windmills, et cetera), and a portrait of a lady in dress fashionable before the revolution. There was even a library of an half dozen books on a sidetable; among them,
Tristram Shandy, Robinson Crusoe
, and
The Annual Report of Litchfield County, Connecticut
; these also, doubtless, the purloined effects of hapless settlers. At each end of the cottage's interior was a sleeping loft, a bedstead of mahogany visible in one and of brass in the other.

Of our own pilfered valuables, Captain Bilbo brought in the whiskey cask first, set it in the log bin to the left of the hearth, and stood back admiringly.

“Looks just like the old Fraunces Tavern,” he observed, then filled three pewter cups with whiskey and placed them on the cherrywood dining table. “Have a drink, my hearties. It'll drive the chill off.”

I was, indeed, shivering, and reached for a cup.

“Sammy!” Uncle remonstrated me.

“No point in catching pneumonia … brother,” I replied and downed the liquor.

“That's the spirit, lad,” Bilbo toasted me and then stooped to charge the fireplace. “Go on, get out of those wet clothes. Bessie shall find you something warm and dry.”

I glanced over at Bilbo's daughter. She smiled, and a smile on such a face as hers is a thing one does not soon forget.

“If thee intends to put a bullet 'twixt mine ears, then thee might as well deliver it now,” Uncle declared.

“There we go, my lambs,” Bilbo ignored Uncle's remark and stood back from the hearth, where a cheerful fire now blazed. He excused himself momentarily and retired to his loft above to change his own wet clothes. Bessie rummaged through an old trunk across the parlor. Neddy sat upon his haunches by the fire and growled evilly.

“For Godsake, play along, Uncle!” I implored him. “Think of the plan!”

“Thy plan is a farrago,” Uncle whispered back.

The ladder creaked and Bilbo descended from above. He was caparisoned now in a tattered but elaborate red silk dressing robe complete with mink collar and cuffs. Upon the lapels were embroidered two snorting griffons. Bessie soon returned with a pair of kersey nightshirts and two robes, one of bearskin, the other of buffalo. Bilbo suddenly produced a bone-handled carving knife. Uncle and I both gasped, but the hulking pirate merely leaned forward and cut our bonds at the wrists and ankles.

“Go on,” the brute said. “Out of your wet things!”

We changed into the scratchy woolens without further protest. Bessie could be heard gurgling and whistling behind our backs.

“There now, isn't that better?” Bilbo said when we were done, and held out the pewter cup to Uncle. “Take it,” he said genially. Uncle pursed his lips and refused. “Take it!” Bilbo roared. Uncle seized the cup and imbibed the whiskey.

“Satisfied?” he asked Bilbo.

“Never,” Bilbo replied with a wry grin. “But life is too short to be squandered in carping, right Neddy?”

“Yap yap,” the dwarf agreed.

“Why don't you go out and procure us a supper worthy of this splendid company, my boy,” Bilbo swatted the little mongrel on the hindquarters and he scampered eagerly out the door. Our cups were refilled and we were adjured to join our host at the fireside, Uncle and I in a wooden settle and Bilbo in a scuffed, padded armchair. Twilight gathered at the windows. The fire was comforting, even in this untoward circumstance. Bilbo offered us some of the tobacco he had pilfered out of our effects. I took a pipe. Soon, even Uncle's stony demeanor began to soften under the influence of the crackling hearth and the Monongahela.

“So,” Bilbo leaned forward avidly in his chair. “Tell me the news of the day.”

Soon you wouldn't have known our little gathering from that of a public room in any country inn. I touched on some particulars of New York politics. Bilbo seemed especially interested in these, and starved, in general, for information about the civilized world. The rumor of our Louisiana purchase astounded him.

“That scoundrel Hamilton is behind it,” Bilbo commented. “Wants to become the American Bonaparte himself, if you ask me.”

“Bosh,” said I, emboldened by the whiskey. “Hamilton is completely shut out of national affairs. Jefferson is the mastermind behind Louisiana. And as for scoundrels, is this not a case of the pot calling the kettle black, eh, Captain?” I toasted him.

“He's a spunky lad, ain't he?” Bilbo quipped to Uncle, who shrugged his shoulders. Just then, Neddy returned from his twilight hunting foray. Around his neck was a small deer, while from his belt hung several partridges. “Well done, my boy!” Bilbo arose to greet the panting hobgoblin.

“That's odd,” I said. “I didn't hear a single gunshot.”

“Neddy doesn't need a gun,” Bilbo informed us without elaborating, and a chill ran down my spine.

“I see,” was my reply.

In a little while we were enjoying the roasted wildfowls with fresh-baked biscuits while Bessie turned a haunch of venison on a spit in the hearth, its juices sizzling aromatically in the glowing embers. It had been so long since our last hot meal that I was as giddy from hunger as I was from the whiskey. Uncle too feasted with single-minded concentration. Bilbo, meanwhile, commenced to spin out the rueful account of those tribulations that had led him to such a low estate as piracy.

“How I miss my dear little city of New York,” Bilbo lamented with all the affectation of a Park Theatre Polonius. I sensed that he had told the story before. “You see before you the mere shadow of he who was Melancton Bilbo, Esquire, soldier in the Great Fight, up-and-coming broker, husband and father, caught between those twin scoundrels, the Castor and Pollux of infamy, General Hamilton and Colonel Aaron Burr. 'Twas my misfortune to marry a beautiful woman, Hester Broadbent, minx, and to be born with a trusting nature…”

A tear fell into his plate.

“How happy was my little family in the house on Cherry Street—or so I thought. The brokerage was a rising concern in the city, with a reputation for probity and an eye for the winning venture. In the spring of '97, Hamilton approached me, on behalf of a certain Mr. Voorhees, with a scheme for erecting a magnificent silk manufactury at the falls of the Passaic River. Everything was arranged, Hamilton assured me. All that was needed now were backers. It was projected that once in operation, the factory could supply all domestic needs in America and that within five years its output should eclipse the great silk mills of the Manchoo princes! Shareholders would realize an incredible bonanza. I invested the bulk of my personal fortune: forty thousand dollars. Needless to say, the scheme fell awry.

“The silkworms procured by this Voorhees (supposedly imported out of Pekin itself) turned out to be no such things. The so-called silk they produced was nothing of the kind, but a luminescent spittle that, once dried, compared with the lowliest doghair as a textile.”

“Sounds like
Trichobaris trinotata
,” Uncle inserted, “the potato stalk borer.”

“Plucked from the very garden rows of Bergen County!” Bilbo avouched with a sob. “Naturally, the venture soon foundered. But not before I was, perforce, constrained to spend more and more of my time at the factory across the river in New Jersey. Unbeknownst to me, Colonel Burr, that notorious lecher, and also, by happenstance, our attorney in the silkworks matter, used my absences as an opportunity to seduce my wife. I became the laughingstock of Manhattan. Finally, Voorhees eloped to England with the entire funds of the Passaic Silkworks Company. Burr abandoned my wife when it became obvious that a planned divorce would leave her penniless. I was ruined and disgraced!”

Bilbo broke down again, but soon recollected himself.

“For a time,” he continued, “I wandered the wharves of South Street seeking a yardarm from which to hang myself. But what, I fretted, would become of little Bessie, the apple of her father's eye. We slipped away westward. Ah, the West, gentlemen, that fabled wilderness of opportunity, mother of El Dorados and Hy-Brasils! Our flatboat got as far as the head of this island. Yes, friends, that derelict upon the shoal was our pretty craft, the
Yet Hopeful
. We ran aground in a raging storm, much as you might had we not
(ahem)
signaled you—”

“Accosted us,” I corrected him.

“I am not finished.”

“By all means.”

“Where was I?”

“You were stranded here, on this island.”

“Yes. And here we remained. Weeks, months went by. The game was plentiful. Soon it occurred to me: why leave? Why go anywhere? The fact is, gentlemen, I had found in this solitude that elusive peace of mind that all men seek. Fortune blows many a strange wind in this wide world. Here we remain in our happy snug harbor.”

Bilbo dandled a turkey leg and smiled ruefully.

“That story is the most preposterous balderdash I ever heard,” was my commentary.

Uncle coughed into the sleeve of his buffalo robe.

“Why, 'tis the sheerest twaddle,” I persisted.

“You didn't find it moving?” Bilbo asked, dismayed.

“I do not believe a word of it,” I told him frankly.

He looked into his plate for a moment, visibly absorbing his disappointment.

“Very well,” he finally said. “Perhaps this will suit you better.” He cleared his throat so as to give it a fresh attack. “How well I recall those carefree days of boyhood under the tulip trees on the lawn of dear old Mount Vernon, playing with my little cousins under the watchful eye of my father, His Excellency George Washington—”

“Bilbo,” said I, “you are a most arrant and contemptible fraud.”

“Do you say I represent falsely?”

“I do sir; you are an humbug through and through.”