New York - The Novel

obliged to give instruction, even to a slave. “It is already predestined who shall go to hell and who shall be saved,” he said. “The godly serve the Lord for His sake, not for their own.” Then he pointed his finger at me. “Submission, young man, is the price of entry to the Church. Do you understand?”
    “Yessir,” I said.
    “You are not the first slave to imagine that by worshipping at ourChurch you may open a path to freedom. But it will not be tolerated. We submit to God because He is good. Not to better ourselves.” And now his voice was getting louder, so that a man passing in the street turned to look. “God is not mocked, young man,” he cried to me then, and fairly glared at me before he strode away.
    A few days later, the Boss turned to me and said: “I hear that you had conversation with Dominie Cornelius.” And he gave me a strange look.
    “Yes, Boss,” I said. But I took care not to speak of religion again, after that.

    And soon there were more important things to concern me than the saving of my soul. For that summer, while the Boss was away upriver, the English came.
    I was working in the kitchen when Jan came running in with the news.
    “Come quickly, Quash,” he calls. “Down to the water. Come and see.”
    I was wondering if the mistress would give me permission, but a moment later she was there too, with little Clara. Clara’s little round face was flushed with excitement, I remember. So we all went down to the waterside by the fort. It was a clear day and you could see right across the harbor. And there in the distance you could see the two English sails. They were riding out in the entrance to the harbor, so that no ships could get in or out to the sea. By and by, we saw a puff of white smoke. Then there was a long pause until we heard the sound of the guns, like a little rumble; for they were maybe seven miles away. And the people by the water cried out. Word came that the English settlers out past Brooklyn were mustering and taking up arms, though nobody knew for sure. The men on the walls of the fort had a cannon pointed out at the harbor, but the governor not being there, nobody was taking charge, which greatly disgusted the Mistress. I think she’d have been glad to take charge herself.
    They had already sent messengers upriver to warn the governor. But it was a day or two before he came back. During that time, the English ships stayed where they were and didn’t come any closer.
    Then one evening the governor arrived to take charge, and as soon as she heard this, the Mistress went to see him. When she got back, she was looking very angry, but she didn’t say why. The next morning, the Boss came home too.
    When the Boss walked in the door, the Mistress remarked that he hadbeen gone a long time. And he replied that he had come back as soon as he could. That was not what the governor said, she answered. She heard he’d made a stop upriver. And she gave him a black look. Made a stop when the English were attacking his own family, she said.
    “Indeed I did,” says he, with a big smile. “And you should be glad of it.”
    She looked at him somewhat hard when he said that. But he paid no mind. “Consider,” he says, “when Stuyvesant told me the English had come, I had no means of knowing how matters stood here. For all I knew, they had already entered the town, seized all our goods and driven you out of house and home. Was I to see our cargo—a rich one, by the way—stolen by the English too? It might be all the fortune we had left. So I thought to take it to a place of safe keeping. It is lodged with the Indian chief in the village to which Stuyvesant saw me going. I have known this Indian many years, Greet. He’s one of the few I can trust. And there it should remain, I think you’ll agree, until this business is over.”
    Well, the Mistress didn’t say a word more, but it showed me plainly the good character of the Boss, to be thinking always of his family.
    All that day New Amsterdam was in much confusion. There were boats taking messages from the English commander, Colonel Nicolls, to Governor Stuyvesant, and back; but no one knew what was in those messages, and the governor, he said nothing. But the English gunships stayed down by the narrows.
    The next day, when I went down to the waterfront with the Boss and Jan, we came upon a crowd of people. They were pointing across to Brooklyn, on our left. And sure enough, you could see the glint of weapons