crept onward, the tally of ships failed to reach expectations. From sympathy with the rebel cause, the feeling within the city was turning to increasingly bitter resentment. The Union Club at the Bush Inn, once engaged in inundating the King with petitions to cease taxing and trying to govern the colonies from afar, was stumbling into mortified silence; at the White Lion the Tories were roaring ever louder, inundating the King with formal avowals of allegiance and support, contributing to the cost of raising local regiments, and starting to ask questions about the two Whig Members of Parliament for Bristol, the Irishman Edmund Burke and the American Henry Cruger.
There, said the Steadfast Society, was Bristol, bleeding from almost a year of war already, with a Whig parliamentary team composed of a golden-tongued Irishman and a leaden-tongued American. Sentiments were changing, feelings were souring. Let all this business three thousand miles away get itself over and done with, let the chief business of the day be
proper
business! And damn the rebels!
On the night of the 16th of January, while the tide was at its ebb, someone set fire to the Savannah La Mar, loading for Jamaica on the Broad Quay not far from Old Nick’s Entrance. She had been daubed with pitch, oil and turpentine, and luck alone had saved her; by the time the city’s two firemen had arrived with their forty-gallon water cart, several hundred shaken sailors and dock denizens had dealt with the blaze before serious damage had been done.
In the morning the port officials and bailiffs discovered that the Fame and the Hibernia, one to north and one to south of the Savannah La Mar, had also been soaked with incendiaries and set alight. For reasons no one could fathom, neither ship had so much as smoldered.
“Barratry in Bristol! The whole of the Quay could have gone up, and the backs, and then the city,” said Dick to Richard the moment he returned from the scene of this shipboard arson.
“Low tide!
Nothing to stop a good blaze leaping from ship to ship—Christ, Richard, it might have been as bad as London’s great fire!” And he shivered.
Nothing terrified people quite so effectively as fire. Not the worst the colliers of Kingswood could do could compare, for the angriest mob was a nothing alongside fire. Mobs were made of men and women with children tagging behind, whereas fire was the monstrous hand of God, the opening of the portals to Hell.
On the 18th of January, Cousin James-the-druggist, ashen-faced, ushered his weeping wife and those of his children still at home through Dick Morgan’s door.
“Will you look after Ann and the girls?” he asked, trembling. “I cannot persuade them that our house is safe.”
“Good God, Jim, what is it?”
“Fire.” He grasped at the counter to steady himself.
“Here,” said Richard, giving him a mug of best rum while Mag and Peg fluttered around the moaning Ann.
“Give her one too,” said Dick as Mr. James Thistlethwaite abandoned his manic quill to join them. “Now tell us, Jim.”
It took a full quarter-pint to calm Cousin James-the-druggist enough to speak. “In the middle of the night someone forced the door of my main warehouse—you know how strong it is, Dick, and how many chains and padlocks it has! He got at my turpentine, soaked a big box in a vat of it, and filled the box with tow soaked in more turpentine. Then he put the box against some casks of linseed oil, and lit it. The place was deserted, of course. No one saw him come, no one saw him go.”
“I do not understand!” cried Dick, quite as white as his first cousin. “We are right on the corner of Bell Lane, and I swear we have heard nothing, seen nothing—
smelled
nothing!”
“It would not burn,” said Cousin James-the-druggist in an odd voice. “I tell you, Dick, it would not burn! It should have burned! I found the box when I came to work. At first I thought the broken door meant someone after opiates or badly
There, said the Steadfast Society, was Bristol, bleeding from almost a year of war already, with a Whig parliamentary team composed of a golden-tongued Irishman and a leaden-tongued American. Sentiments were changing, feelings were souring. Let all this business three thousand miles away get itself over and done with, let the chief business of the day be
proper
business! And damn the rebels!
On the night of the 16th of January, while the tide was at its ebb, someone set fire to the Savannah La Mar, loading for Jamaica on the Broad Quay not far from Old Nick’s Entrance. She had been daubed with pitch, oil and turpentine, and luck alone had saved her; by the time the city’s two firemen had arrived with their forty-gallon water cart, several hundred shaken sailors and dock denizens had dealt with the blaze before serious damage had been done.
In the morning the port officials and bailiffs discovered that the Fame and the Hibernia, one to north and one to south of the Savannah La Mar, had also been soaked with incendiaries and set alight. For reasons no one could fathom, neither ship had so much as smoldered.
“Barratry in Bristol! The whole of the Quay could have gone up, and the backs, and then the city,” said Dick to Richard the moment he returned from the scene of this shipboard arson.
“Low tide!
Nothing to stop a good blaze leaping from ship to ship—Christ, Richard, it might have been as bad as London’s great fire!” And he shivered.
Nothing terrified people quite so effectively as fire. Not the worst the colliers of Kingswood could do could compare, for the angriest mob was a nothing alongside fire. Mobs were made of men and women with children tagging behind, whereas fire was the monstrous hand of God, the opening of the portals to Hell.
On the 18th of January, Cousin James-the-druggist, ashen-faced, ushered his weeping wife and those of his children still at home through Dick Morgan’s door.
“Will you look after Ann and the girls?” he asked, trembling. “I cannot persuade them that our house is safe.”
“Good God, Jim, what is it?”
“Fire.” He grasped at the counter to steady himself.
“Here,” said Richard, giving him a mug of best rum while Mag and Peg fluttered around the moaning Ann.
“Give her one too,” said Dick as Mr. James Thistlethwaite abandoned his manic quill to join them. “Now tell us, Jim.”
It took a full quarter-pint to calm Cousin James-the-druggist enough to speak. “In the middle of the night someone forced the door of my main warehouse—you know how strong it is, Dick, and how many chains and padlocks it has! He got at my turpentine, soaked a big box in a vat of it, and filled the box with tow soaked in more turpentine. Then he put the box against some casks of linseed oil, and lit it. The place was deserted, of course. No one saw him come, no one saw him go.”
“I do not understand!” cried Dick, quite as white as his first cousin. “We are right on the corner of Bell Lane, and I swear we have heard nothing, seen nothing—
smelled
nothing!”
“It would not burn,” said Cousin James-the-druggist in an odd voice. “I tell you, Dick, it would not burn! It should have burned! I found the box when I came to work. At first I thought the broken door meant someone after opiates or badly
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