. There, promoted
to be harpooner, Israel, whose eye and arm had been so improved by
practice with his gun in the wilderness, now further intensified his
aim, by darting the whale-lance; still, unwittingly, preparing himself
for the Bunker Hill rifle.

In this last voyage, our adventurer experienced to the extreme all the
hardships and privations of the whaleman's life on a long voyage to
distant and barbarous waters--hardships and privations unknown at the
present day, when science has so greatly contributed, in manifold ways,
to lessen the sufferings, and add to the comforts of seafaring men.
Heartily sick of the ocean, and longing once more for the bush, Israel,
upon receiving his discharge at Nantucket at the end of the voyage, hied
straight back for his mountain home.

But if hopes of his sweetheart winged his returning flight, such hopes
were not destined to be crowned with fruition. The dear, false girl was
another's.

CHAPTER III.

ISRAEL GOES TO THE WARS; AND REACHING BUNKER HILL IN TIME TO BE OF
SERVICE THERE, SOON AFTER IS FORCED TO EXTEND HIS TRAVELS ACROSS THE SEA
INTO THE ENEMY'S LAND.

Left to idle lamentations, Israel might now have planted deep furrows in
his brow. But stifling his pain, he chose rather to plough, than be
ploughed. Farming weans man from his sorrows. That tranquil pursuit
tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations. There, too, in mother earth,
you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see the
planting torn up by the roots. But if wandering in the wilderness, and
wandering upon the waters, if felling trees, and hunting, and shipwreck,
and fighting with whales, and all his other strange adventures, had not
as yet cured poor Israel of his now hopeless passion, events were at
hand for ever to drown it.

It was the year 1774. The difficulties long pending between the colonies
and England were arriving at their crisis. Hostilities were certain. The
Americans were preparing themselves. Companies were formed in most of
the New England towns, whose members, receiving the name of minute-men,
stood ready to march anywhere at a minute's warning. Israel, for the
last eight months, sojourning as a laborer on a farm in Windsor,
enrolled himself in the regiment of Colonel John Patterson of Lenox,
afterwards General Patterson.

The battle of Lexington was fought on the 18th of April, 1775; news of
it arrived in the county of Berkshire on the 20th about noon. The next
m