The Power and the Glory Read Free

anything to sustain life.
    He picked up the canvas bag and pulled apart the opening. Inside he found a half bottle of dark rum wrapped in rags. A further search revealed a small pistol, together with powder and ball to fire one shot.

Two
    Boston, Massachusetts September 1797
    Y OUNG WILL CUTLER saw them first: two glints of white on the distant horizon beyond Outer Brewster Island, the massive outcropping of bedrock at the entrance to Boston Harbor. He turned the lens of his long glass to bring the glints into sharper focus. She was a double-topsail schooner—that much he could determine from the two massive fore-and-aft sails now beginning to take shape beneath the furled topsails—but he could not yet see her hull despite his elevation on the roof of his family’s counting house on Long Wharf. He could see that her course was north-northwesterly and that she was making for the Graves, as though intending to bypass Boston. But the sailor in Will knew that counted for naught. Although the fifteen-knot southwesterly breeze hit squarely abaft her beam, the schooner had taken in her topsails, which she would not have done had she intended to carry on to some farther destination. Boston was her destination. Will was convinced of that. Once she sailed past the Graves up toward Nahant, she would swing her bow through the wind on a new course that would take her southward between Deer Island and Long Island Head.
    As the schooner rose higher on the horizon, Will waited in agonizing suspense. He had a strong hunch, but it was only a hunch. He would not know for certain until he saw her hull, more specifically the color of her hull. When the mainsail took full form just above her deck, he held his breath and stood on tiptoes, as though those extra few inches
might make all the difference. Almost there . . . almost there . . . yes! A brilliant flash of yellow reflected the sun, and Will whooped for joy. He knew of only one yellow-hulled, double-topsail schooner sailing in these waters, and that beautiful and graceful vessel sailed in the employ of his family.
    â€œJamie!” he shouted down to his younger brother lolling about on the wharf below, inspecting the merchant vessels nested tight against each other, their yards a-cockbill to avoid entanglement. The boy glanced up. “Get Father! I see her! She’s coming!”
    Jamie Cutler looked up, shading his eyes. “You see her, Will? Are you sure?”
    â€œOf course I’m sure, you twit. Now hurry! Father’s at McMurray’s, with Mr. Hunt.”
    â€œI know that!” Jamie took off at a full sprint. At the age of thirteen he was, like his brother, a fine physical specimen, consistently finishing first or second in footraces against his classmates at Derby Academy in Hingham. Within minutes he was across from Faneuil Hall and inside McMurray’s, an establishment renowned for the quantity and quality of its shepherd’s pie. He found his father in the dimly lit oaken room sitting by a window and having dinner with George Hunt, the diminutive, soft-spoken, and yet highly competent administrator of Cutler & Sons.
    â€œFather!” Jamie cried out, bursting into their conversation. Patrons chatting at nearby tables stopped in mid-sentence to take note of the excited lad dressed in ordinary brown trousers and open-necked white shirt. “It’s Falcon, Father! Will’s seen her. She’s coming! She’s almost here, Father!”
    A blond-haired man in his mid-thirties placed a large hand on Jamie’s shoulder, the sky blue of his eyes boring into the rich hazel of his son’s. They were expecting Falcon. All of Boston, all of New England, all of America was expecting Falcon . Her imminent arrival was the reason he had allowed his sons to abandon school and sail with him to Boston from Hingham every day this week, and would continue to do so until the day Falcon arrived. But could today really be that day? She was a