price in paper dollars, which he turned into Spanish silver. An
embargo detained him for six months, during which this currency
increased to three times the value of the paper money. He gave up
the voyage to Calcutta, sold the Spanish dollars and loaded with
coffee and spices for Salem. At the Cape of Good Hope, however,
he discovered that he could earn a pretty penny by sending his
cargo home in other ships and loading the Benjamin again for
Mauritius. When, at length, he arrived in Salem harbor, after
nineteen months away, his enterprises had reaped a hundred per
cent for Elias Hasket Derby and his own share was the snug little
fortune of four thousand dollars. Part of this he, of course,
invested at sea, and at twenty-two he was part owner of the
Betsy, East Indiaman, and on the road to independence.

As second mate in the Benjamin had sailed Richard Cleveland,
another matured mariner of nineteen, who crowded into one life an
Odyssey of adventure noteworthy even in that era and who had the
knack of writing about it with rare skill and spirit. In 1797,
when twenty-three years old, he was master of the bark Enterprise
bound from Salem to Mocha for coffee. The voyage was abandoned at
Havre and he sent the mate home with the ship, deciding to remain
abroad and gamble for himself with the chances of the sea. In
France he bought on credit a "cutter-sloop" of forty-three tons,
no larger than the yachts whose owners think it venturesome to
take them off soundings in summer cruises. In this little box of
a craft he planned to carry a cargo of merchandise to the Cape of
Good Hope and thence to Mauritius.

His crew included two men, a black cook, and a brace of boys who
were hastily shipped at Havre. "Fortunately they were all so much