"Reckless folly, Bell," said he, after a moment. "You are young
and lucky. If you were flung in the broad water there with a
millstone tied to your neck, I should not be surprised to see you
turn up again. My young friend, to start off with no destination
but Canada is too much even for you. We have no men to waste.
Wait; a rusting sabre is better than a hole in the heart. There
will be good work for you in a few days, I hope."

And there was--the job of which I have spoken, that came to me
through his kind offices. We set sail in a schooner one bright
morning,--D'ri and I and thirty others,--bound for Two-Mile Creek.
Horses were waiting for us there. We mounted them, and made the
long journey overland--a ride through wood and swale on a road worn
by the wagons of the emigrant, who, even then, was pushing westward
to the fertile valleys of Ohio. It was hard travelling, but that
was the heyday of my youth, and the bird music, and the many voices
of a waning summer in field and forest, were somehow in harmony
with the great song of my heart. In the middle of the afternoon of
September 6, we came to the Bay, and pulled up at headquarters, a
two-story frame building on a high shore. There were wooded
islands in the offing, and between them we could see the
fleet--nine vessels, big and little.

I turned over the men, who were taken to the ships immediately and
put under drill. Surgeon Usher of the _Lawrence_ and a young
midshipman rowed me to Gibraltar Island, well out in the harbor,
where the surgeon presented me to Perry--a tall, shapely man, with
dark hair and eyes, and ears hidden by heavy tufts of beard. He
stood on a rocky point high above the water, a glass to his eye,
looking seaward. His youth surprised me: he was then twenty-eight.