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they?”
    â€œHonest, I ain’t lying. I don’t know nothing about them.”
    He slapped me hard across the face, but he was holding on to my shirt front, so I couldn’t fall down. “Answer.”
    â€œHonest,” I said. “I don’t know.” The one thing was to keep on lying. If he knew I’d taken them, he’d lash me for sure. But so long as he couldn’t prove it, he couldn’t do more than slap me around a little.
    He shook me by the shirt front. “Answer,” he said.
    â€œHonest,” I started to blurt out, but he belted me across the face again and cut me off in the middle.
    Then they made me strip down right there on deck, where the other men could see me. I was dead ashamed to be seen naked that way, especially with the Iverses looking me over and turning me around like I wasn’t nothing but a hog ready for butchering. My face and head hurt bad, too, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. But after a while they realized that I didn’t have the notes hidden on me anywhere, and they let me get dressed again.
    Then Captain Ivers said, “Go back to the house and get your old clothes. You’re sailing with us in the morning.”
    I just stared at him. He done just what we wanted. It was a chance for me to take my daddy’s soldiers’ notes down to Mr. William Samuel Johnson in New York.

3
    I ran down the wharf and back up the road to the house. Mum was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes with a knife. “Mum,” I whispered, even though nobody was around, “I’m going on the brig to New York. Get the notes. I’ll take them to Mr. Johnson.”
    She looked at my face. “The coward hit you pretty hard.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” I said. “Get the notes, quick.”
    But she went on looking at me. “I don’t trust him,” she said. “Did he say why you was to go on the brig?”
    I slowed down and gave that a little thought. “Well, no, he didn’t.”
    â€œI don’t trust him. He wouldn’t never take you before. Now he finds them notes missing and all of a sudden he wants you to go.”
    I began to see that she was right. He had some reason for it that he wasn’t telling us. “Well, I ain’t got any choice about it, Mum. I have to go. So I might just as well take the notes. We have to take a chance on it.”
    She thought about it for a minute. “I guess you’re right, Daniel. We have to take a chance.” She went out to the cow shed to get the notes. I went down into the cellar to gather together some clothes. They didn’t amount to very much—just a couple of raggedy shirts and a pair of trousers. About a minute later Mum came down the cellar stairs, with the soldiers’ notes tucked into the top of her dress. She gave them to me. I wrapped them up in the clothes and tied the bundle together with a piece of string. “Be careful, Daniel,” she said. “He’ll lash you sure if he catches you with them.”
    â€œI’ll be careful. I’ll find somewheres to hide them amongst the cargo.”
    She nodded. Then she got a kind of faraway look in her eyes. “Dan, I don’t want you to take no risks, but if you could get to see Black Sam Fraunces and find out about Willy …” That was her sister, my Aunt Wilhelmina.
    â€œI’ll try,” I said.
    Then we heard the front door slam. We came up out of the cellar. The Iverses were standing there. Captain Ivers jerked his head at me. “Arabus, go down and sleep on the brig with the men. We sail at the first tide in morning.”
    So Mum gave me a big hug, and I hugged her back, and then I said good-bye and left. Saying good-bye to her made me feel kind of peculiar. I was only going for three or four days—a day to sail down and a couple of days to unload and load up again, and a day to sail back. It wasn’t a very long time