Hanes was ahead of him. When he got pretty near New London harbour, all they could see of Hane’s boat was just about that much of the stern. Eddie said to my father, I believe Hane’s boat is going down. Look said Eddie. It was dark, after night of course. My father said, well I’m going to have to try to sail alongside of them. So he did. And by God he got the two men in the boat and he tied the Hane’s boat onto the stem. The harbour was quite rough. My father let out a lot of rope so the Hane’s boat wouldn’t run into them. It was half full of water, and by God, didn’t it run into my father’s boat. Coming in, a big sea started, my father’s boat went ahead, and the little boat went up along side of my father’s boat then up on the stern of my father’s boat. My father wasn’t in very good humor. This old Hanes fellow was bothering my father when he was steering. My father asked him to get the hell down into the cabin. He wouldn’t. Eddie was a big boy at that time, I guess. I don’t know what age. My father said, look, Eddie you hit that fellow and knock him out for the night. Eddie went up to him and dropped him. Knocked him cold as a mackerel. My father said that’ll hold him. They all met him at the western breakwater, tied up his boat so she wouldn’t sink right down and he had four kegs of rum. That old fellow and his son had to walk, all the way around the shore, following up the French River to Yankee Hill Farm. My father, on his way home, sank twenty—five kegs in New London Bay again.”

“This particular winter, Eddie was a grown up man, and he had a little heart on flame so he said to my father, you know, you should go out and get one of them kegs of rum and I’ll sell it for ya. He said you don’t know where it is. Eddie said I know I don’t know where it’s at. You come out and show me. No I can’t do that. Eddie knew where it was all the time, but he was coming up with a scheme of how he was going to steal it so my father wouldn’t know. So what the hell did he do, one night he went out with the crosscut saw and he took four kegs and he loaded them in a little box sleigh, and he was gone for two months. The rum was gone and my father never knew who took the rum. He blamed everybody but Eddie.”

“I can tell you how my father got caught one time too. They were watching him year after year, and one year they caught him. He had buried a pint in the yard at our home in BayView, proba- bly a year previous to this. They came out with steel rods and they probed and found the pint. That put an end to things for six months.”

Yankee Hill Farm, at the entrance to New London Harbour.

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