Oliver Hazard Perry

“ In order to superintend the building of this vessel, Captain Perry, with his wife, left his quiet home in Westerly, and went to stay in Warren.
Oliver, then not quite thirteen years old, remained at home to take charge of the family.
He saw that his sister and brothers went to school regularly. He bought all the family provisions. Each day he wrote to his father and mother, telling them about home affairs. In the [Pg 83] meantime, he was busily planning what his work in life should be.
His mother had taught him that a man must be brave, and always ready to serve his country. ”

“ Perry, in his fresh vessel, bore up to break Barclay’s line.
“The British ships had fought themselves to a standstill.210 The Lady Prevost was crippled and sagged to leeward, though ahead of the others. The Detroit and Queen Charlotte were so disabled that they could not successfully oppose fresh antagonists. There could thus be but little resistance to Perry, as the Niagara stood down, and broke the British line, firing her port guns into the Chippeway, Little Belt, and Lady Prevost, and the starboard ones into the Detroit, Queen Charlotte, and Hunter, raking on both sides. ”

“ They may have expected Perry to find him in his cups and tuck him up comfortably at Charringworth or at Ebrington.
Till August 24 Perry was detained in prison, or, odd to say, at the inn! He told various tales; a tinker or a servant had murdered his master and hidden him in a bean-rick, where, on search being made, non est inventus. Harrison, and the rents [Pg 61] he had collected, were vanished in the azure. Perry now declared that he would tell all to Overbury, and to no other man. To him Perry averred that his mother and brother, Joan and Richard Perry, had murdered Harrison! ”

“ I taunted him, “but, if you do, some day I will put a knife into you—wait my chance to do it. I swear it, Carlos!”
“I SHALL not beat you,” he said. “Listen. Look out the window at the sea and the old hulk lying there. It shall be your home—your prison—for the rest of your days. A bare prison, a bare fare—and you like the good things of life, don't you, Jennie? You married me—even old me!—for them. There you will grow old, dull, withered. No one will ever come to you. I shall send your brother a certificate of your death—from our island fever; tell people here that you are dead ”

“ Luke and Ernie were there with their girlfriends, and there were more kids, midwestern and healthy even if they weren’t necessarily all Scandic, some Vietnamese kids, some Hmong, some desis descended from the H1B diaspora. They had a gigantic meal in a student place that was heavy on the potatoes and beers the size of your head, which Perry resisted for a couple hours until he figured that he’d metabolized most of the painkiller and then started in, getting just short of roaring drunk. He told them war stories, told them about Death Waits, told them about the co-op and the plan to fight back. ”

“ What is there in me which broods upon his just and honorable life, and which he cannot drive away though he tries? Has he some learned superstition, some religious vow or mistaken sacrifice?"
Perry turned down a lane and then into the bed of a frozen brook, and coming in sight of the broad river, espied his father, gun in hand, stealthily creeping under a load of brush and twigs which the Judge's negro had piled about his back and head, to conceal his figure from a flock of ducks that were bathing and diving in an open place of deep water, to which the ice had not extended. ”

“ We could only wait for nature. Interference meant death.
About this time one of my fellow doctors suggested to me a connection between the shadow and Denton's experiments. It was common gossip at the clubs, he said.
The next morning the rumor was in the papers. A mob howled around the hospital in the afternoon. The following day there was a larger mob, but it was kept back by a couple of dozen policemen. Vassall had obtained them through the Home Office. He sat beside the unconscious man with a revolver in his pocket. Henryson and I had revolvers too. We always carried them now. ”

“ Oliver ran down the steps again, the accursed glass bottles clicking together in his pocket. In the narrow vestibule below he stood for a moment, gazing down upon the floor in the utter abandonment of blank despair. At last he looked up, and then crawled fearfully forward into the room beyond, lit by the faint glow of the lantern. He sat him down upon the floor, and burst out crying. By-and-by a blind rage filled his heart against the cruelty of his fate and against the man who had brought it all upon him. ”

“ Bland spoke up. “Is it going to be treating Handlon right to de-astralize him now? It will be his last chance to have a body on this earth.”
“Unfortunately that body never belonged to Handlon,” said O’Hara. “Hence I fail to see why Perry should be discommoded for the balance of his life with a companion astral. Perry is clearly entitled to his own body, free and unhampered. Friend Skip is out of luck, unless––Well, I don’t mind telling you, Kell, that you just gave me an idea. Snap into it now!” ”

“ At that sight Oliver gave a shrill, piping, inarticulate cry. The next instant he saw Gaspard pick her up bodily, and, running forward, fling her limp, death-like form into the coach, leap in himself, close the door with a crash that Oliver almost heard, and the next moment rumble away into the darkness.
[Pg 169]
"Oh God!" whispered Oliver. "Oh God! Poor Céleste! poor Céleste!"
"That will do," said the master; "you need look no more;" and in answer to his words Oliver turned towards him. A shadow of a dusky pallor lay upon the master's face, and beads of sweat stood on his forehead. ”

“ Ferris said very kindly.
“Then—I don't mind being teased.”
“Hear, hear!” cried a chorus. “Bravo!”
“But you, might mind your husband being teased, don't you see?” cried Elsie swiftly.
“No, no!”
I said. “That's all right.”
“Oh! You don't matter, you young reprobate!” said Villiers. “It's Mrs. Grant.”
“I am sure that Mr. Ferris would not write anything unkind,” said Omi; “and I—I expect Jimmy deserves it! Please!”
“Rule 1,” cried Mrs. Harraden, the authoress. She meant that Omi was nice; and they all clapped.
So Lanebury stole to the piano and played soft music, and Elsie stood up. ”

“ There was in the whole expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the debility of the frame. You saw there the evidence of a mind that was cultivated, and you felt that in that cultivation there was something formidable. A notable contrast to this countenance, prematurely worn and eminently intelligent, was the round healthy face of Oliver, with slow blue eyes, fixed hard on the penetrating orbs of his brother, as if trying with might and main to catch from them a gleam of that knowledge with which they shone clear and frigid as a star. ”

“ Peachey, who had walked back from church with her, and who harboured the common delusion that Life selects only slim bodies for its secret agents, did not dream as she watched that enormous figure toil up the staircase that she was gazing upon the movement of destiny. Had Oliver been questioned as to the dominant influence in shaping his career, he would probably have answered blindly, but sincerely, "The Critique of Pure Reason"—so far was he from suspecting that his philosophy had less control over his future than had the accident that his mother was the third cousin of Priscilla Batte. ”

“ You are stronger than I, but I have some power." He drew forth the two bottles from his pocket. [Pg 60] "See!" said he, "here is what you have set your soul upon, and for which you desired to kill me. Without you promise me all that I ask, I will fling them both out upon the pavement beneath. And what then? They will be broken, and the water will run down into the gutter and be gone."
There was a moment of dead silence, during which Oliver stood by the open window with the two phials in his hand, and the master sat looking smilingly at him. After a while the smile broke into a laugh. ”

“ Perry sighed. “I liked him a lot, Fudge.”
“Me, too. I wish he wasn’t a criminal, that’s what I wish. And, oh, shucks, now he can’t do that drawing! I’ll have to tell Dick that he left town unexpectedly. Say, let’s do something to-night, [223] Perry. Think your folks’ll let you go to the movies?”
“I’ll ask them. I ought to study, but—but I guess I’m too excited.” Perry laughed softly. “Say, a fellow doesn’t save a train-robber from the police every day, does he?”
“I guess not! I guess if the fellows knew what we’d been up to to-day they’d open their eyes!” ”

“ With that Perry looks at me all in a fluster [83] —he have no more wits to turn things off than a born idiot. 'Very well,' says I to her, eating at my egg as if I thought nothing; 'I hopes my missis won't have no call to use 'em, but she's took awful bad in the chest sometimes, and it's as well for us to be ready.' 'I'm sure I pities her,' says the girl, 'for there ain't nothing worse than spasms. ”

“ Oliver shifted the straw he was chewing from one side of his mouth to the other. "Very well," said he. "Is not one in the family enough to die of the same thing?"
"Humph!" said his mother, and went back to her work with more clatter than ever.
Just then, at the farther end of the street, the inn door opened, and the strange gentleman in black came out, followed first by his servant, and then by Pierre, the landlord. He stopped for a moment at the head of a flight of stone steps, and Pierre pointed, as Oliver thought, towards their house. ”

“ I don't know whether, if it were removed from your face, it would mean so much; but taken in connection with its surroundings, it's a very expressive feature; it warns the stranger to be careful. In fact, most of your features are danger signals, Polly; I 'm rather glad I 've been taking a course of popular medical lectures on First Aid to the Injured!"
And so, with a great deal of nonsense and a good sprinkling of quiet, friendly chat, they made their way to Professor Salazar's house, proffered Polly's apologies, and took the train for San Francisco. ”

“ He’d hide, wouldn’t he, Fudge?”
“Where? He is hiding. He wears that mustache and he’s trusting to that, you see. Why, if he went sneaking around the police would notice him at once, Perry. So he comes right out in public; makes believe he’s a civil engineer and plays the piano in a theater. You don’t suppose, do you, that the police would ever think of looking in a moving picture house for an escaped train-robber? Say, he must sort of laugh to himself when he sees those train-robbery films, eh?” ”

“ Perry, the hosier in London. You know the man, having made his acquaintance on a previous occasion, when he helped you to intercept a despatch from the English Government to their Minister at the Hague. I have no more to add, except that you will not return to France, without permission. If you do, your death be on your head."
He turned to go; then wheeled round suddenly and shook his hand threateningly at St. Just. "And beware, Sir; think not to escape my vengeance, if you again betray my trust. Even in England you will find my arm long enough to reach you. Spies will dog your steps ”

“ He knows we're overstocked, and in want of ready cash, and he's taken the opportunity to beat us down. Harris is more or less in his power. I don't know what will happen, Bet—I haven't told your mother yet; she's harped so on my getting a rise—but, unless they come to some satisfactory arrangement to-day, I don't know that Harris will be able to afford to keep me at all. That's where there's a job for a fairy. ”

“ Upon his arrival at Lake Erie, Perry found a few men in the service of the Government on the Lake, and the remainder of his men were made up of new recruits, with a contingent taken from the North Western army of men, naturally brave but without experience on ship-board. Perry had arrayed against him skillful officers who had been taught the art of war, and the methods of victory under Nelson. Brave and highly disciplined seamen in whose vocabulary defeat had had no place, with recruits like Perry's taken from the army, and an auxiliary force of Indian sharp-shooters. ”

“ Oliver's credit that her looks made so powerful an appeal to the chivalry of young men. "All young men immediately want to protect her," he was wont to say, "and their trouble is that they can't find anyone to protect her from."
He watched Shere Ali and Dick Linforth with a sly amusement, and as a result of his watching promised himself yet more amusement during the next two days. He was roused from this pleasing anticipation by his irascible friend, Colonel Fitzwarren, who, without the slightest warning, flung a loud and defiant challenge across the table to Shere All. ”

“ Come and sit here. No, there! In the silly corner!” She meant the half-lit part where the engaged couples sit. “Jimmy, you know everybody. Tell her all about them. I'm not going to frighten her with a heap of introductions all at once. It makes you mix up people ever afterward. You can go and be introduced to Mrs. Grant, one by one, you know.”
We sat in the silly corner; and Omi whispered: “She's nice.” Ferris ran over and shook hands. “He's nice, too,” Omi added. Elsie Vane stretched out her hand from the darkest corner to Omi. ”

“ They bore down on Perry and killed all the men on his flag-ship but eight. Then he helped them fire the last gun, and with the flag they jumped into a boat which they paddled for [Pg 207] the Niagara under a galling fire. This was the first time that a galling fire had ever been used at sea. Perry passed within pistol-shot of the British, and in less than a quarter of an hour after he trod the poop of the Niagara he was able to write to General Harrison, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." ”