Part 70

"Will you row now?" shouted Benjamin.

"No; but I will give you a thrashing when I can get at you." And he continued to swim after the boat, the rowers pushing it forward out of his reach, whenever he got near enough to seize it. Then Benjamin would cry out:

"Will you row now, John?" and back the defiant answer would come:

"Never; but I'll throw you into the river if I can get at you."

Then forward the rowers would push the boat beyond his reach. For twenty minutes this game was played with the miserable fellow in the water, when one of the number said:

"He is giving out, we must take him in, or he'll drown."

"Well, we don't want to drown him," replied Benjamin; "I guess we better take him in." Then, turning to John, he continued:

"Say, John, we'll take you in now; you are soaked outside as much as you were inside," and, stopping the boat, they hauled the poor fellow in, too much exhausted to throw Benjamin or any one else overboard.

"John!" shouted Benjamin, as they laid him down, dripping wet, on the bottom of the boat, "it don't pay to drink too much brandy. You are the only one in the crowd who can't take care of himself."

Benjamin was rather severe, but then he had endured insult and ingratitude so long from his old friend, that his patience was exhausted. The outcome of this scrape on the Delaware Benjamin shall tell in his own words:

"We hardly exchanged a civil word after this adventure. At length a West India captain, who had a commission to procure a preceptor for the sons of a gentleman at Barbadoes, met with him and proposed to carry him thither to fill the situation. He accepted, and promised to remit what he owed me out of the first money he should receive; but I never heard of him after."

Probably he died, a miserable sot, in Barbadoes, without a friend to mark his grave or write the story of his shame. Benjamin lost, of course, all the money he had loaned him. In later life he referred to the end of John Collins, and said that he (Benjamin) received retribution for his influence over Collins, when he made him as much of a skeptic as himself in Boston. It was there that he unsettled his mind as to the reality of religion. At that time he was industrious, temperate, and honest. But, losing his respect for religion, he was left without restraint and went rapidly to ruin. Benjamin was the greatest sufferer by his fall, and thus was terribly rebuked for influencing him to treat religion with contempt.

Governor Keith frequently sent for Benjamin to dine with him, that he might converse with him about the proposed printing house. At length Benjamin was able to take with him an inventory of all the articles necessary for establishing a printing house.

"It is not on a large scale," said Benjamin. "I think I better begin moderately. I can enlarge as business increases."

"That is wise," answered the governor; "but you want a suitable outfit for a first-class printing office."

"Yes; and my inventory contemplates that. The cost will be about one hundred pounds sterling, I judge."

"Not so expensive as I supposed," remarked Governor Keith. "I have been thinking whether you better not go to England to purchase these articles. You understand what is wanted."

"I had not thought of that," replied Benjamin, both surprised and pleased by the proposition to visit London. "I should defer to your judgment in that as in other things."

"If you go it will be necessary for you to sail with Captain Annis, who makes a trip once a year from here to London. It will be some months before he will sail, so that you have plenty of time to think and plan."

"I think favorably of the proposition now," continued Benjamin. "I could select the types and see that every thing ordered was good of the kind, and this would be of advantage."

"That is what I thought. And more than that; while there you can establish correspondences in the book-selling and stationery line."

"I think I could; and such acquaintance might prove of advantage to me in other respects."

"It certainly would; and I decide that you get yourself ready to sail with Captain Annis. You can continue to work for Keimer, still keeping the secret, but completing your plans."

This was the final agreement, and Benjamin never dreamed that Governor Keith was not honest. If he had divulged to Mr. Read, or Bradford, or even to Mr. Keimer, what the governor proposed, they would have exposed his deceitful, unreliable character, and the enterprise would have been abandoned.

XXV.

WORKING, READING, AND COURTING.

Benjamin continued to work for Keimer, who did not suspect that his employee was planning to set up business for himself. Keimer was a very singular, erratic man, believing little in the Christian religion, and yet given to a kind of fanaticism on certain lines.

"Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard," he quoted from the Mosaic law, as a reason for wearing a long beard, when Benjamin inquired of him: