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They landed, made a fire, cooked their food, ate of it, and lay down to sleep until night should come again.

They set out early in the ensuing twilight, and rowed westward all night, in the face of a gentle wind.

“If there were only another Faulkner’s Island to flee to,” said Mr. Bushnell, as morning drew near. “Do you know (to one of the men) a safe place to hide in on this coast?”

They were then off Merwin’s Point, and between West Haven and Milford.

“There’s Poquahaug,” was the reply, with a momentary catch of the oar, and incline of the head toward the south-west.

” What is Poquahaug?”

“A little island, pretty well in, close to shore, as it were, and, maybe, deserted.”

After deliberate council had been held it was resolved to examine the locality.

A few years after New Haven and Milford churches were formed under the oak-tree at New Haven, this little island, to which they were fleeing to hide the Turtle from daylight, was “granted to Charles Deal for a tobacco plantation, provided that he would not trade with the Dutch or Indians;” but now Indians, Dutch and Charles Deal alike had left it, the latter with a rude, sheltering building in place of Ansantawae’s big summer wigwam that used to adorn its crest.

To this spot, bright with grass, and green with full-foliaged trees of oak on its eastern shore, the weary boatmen, who had had a long, hard pull of twenty miles to make, came, just as the longest day’s sun was at its rising.

They were so glad and relieved and satisfied to find no one on it.

The Turtle was left at anchor near the shore; the whale-boat gave up of its provisions, and presently the little camp was in the enjoyment of a long day of rest and refreshment.

Should anyone approach from the seaward or from the mainland, it was determined that the party should resolve itself into a band of fishermen, fishing for striped bass, for which the locality was well known.

As the day wore on, and the falling tide revealed a line of stones that gradually increased, as the water fell, to a bar a hundred feet wide, stretching from the island to the sands of the Connecticut shore, David Bushnell perceived that the locality was just the proper place in which to learn and teach the art of navigating the Turtle. He examined the region well, and then called the men together.

They were staunch, good-hearted fellows, accustomed to long pulls in northern seas after whales, and that they were patriotic he fully believed. The Turtle was drawn up under the grassy bank, where the long sedge half hid, and bushels of rock-weed and sea-drift wholly concealed it, and then, in a few carefully-chosen words, David Bushnell entrusted it to the watch and care of the boatmen.

“I am going to leave it here, and you with it, until I return,” he said. “Guard it with your lives if need be. If you handle it, it will be at the risk of life. If you keep it well, Congress will reward you.”

The mystery of the whole affair enchanted the men. They made faithful promises, and, in the glorious twilight of the evening, rowed David Bushnell across the beautiful stretch of Sound that to-day separates Charles Island from the comely old town of Milford.

As the whale-boat went up the harbor, a sailing vessel was getting ready to depart.

Finding that it was bound to New York, David Bushnell took passage in it the same night.

Two days later, with a letter from Governor Trumbull to General Washington as his introduction, the young man, by command of the latter, sought out General Parsons, and “requested him to furnish him with two or three men to learn the navigation of his new machine. General Parsons immediately sent for Ezra Lee, then a sergeant, and two others, who had offered their services to go on board a fireship; and, on Bushnell’s request being made known to them, they enlisted themselves under him for this novel piece of service.”