Up the Thames sailed the lucky little merchantman in the year of
1687, with three hundred thousand pounds sterling as her
freightage of treasure. Captain Phips made honest division with
his backers and, because men of his integrity were not over
plentiful in England after the Restoration, King James knighted
him. He sailed home to Boston, "a man of strong and sturdy
frame," as Hawthorne fancied him, "whose face had been roughened
by northern tempests and blackened by the burning sun of the West
Indies . . . . He wears an immense periwig flowing down over his
shoulders . . . . His red, rough hands which have done many a
good day's work with the hammer and adze are half-covered by the
delicate lace rues at the wrist." But he carried with him the
manners of the forecastle, a man hasty and unlettered but
superbly brave and honest. Even after he had become Governor he
thrashed the captain of the Nonesuch frigate of the royal navy,
and used his fists on the Collector of the Port after cursing him
with tremendous gusto. Such behavior in a Governor was too
strenuous, and Sir William Phips was summoned to England, where
he died while waiting his restoration to office and royal favor.
Failing both, he dreamed of still another treasure voyage, "for
it was his purpose, upon his dismission from his Government once
more to have gone upon his old Fishing-Trade, upon a mighty shelf
of rock and banks of sand that lie where he had informed
himself."



CHAPTER II. THE PRIVATEERS OF '76