icans, coaxing and commanding, getting more work out of them by his
gay bright manner than the overlookers could extract with their whips,
his brain was thumping with plans of delivery from a life which he
hated so blackly that he would wrench himself free of it before the year
was out if he had to ship as a common sailor for New York. It seemed to
him that the vacancies in his brain ached. His imagination was hot with
the future awaiting him beyond that cursed stretch of blinding water.
For the first time he fully realized his great abilities, knew that he
had in him the forces that make history. All the encouragement of his
mother and Hugh Knox, the admiration and confidence of such men as Mr.
Cruger, the spoiling of his relatives, and his easy conquest or equally
flattering antagonism of the youth of the Island, had fostered his
self-confidence without persuading him that he was necessarily a genius.
Strong as his youthful ambitions had been, burning as his desire for
more knowledge, much in his brain had been dormant, and a humorous
philosophy, added to the sanguineness of youth and a deep affection for
a few people, had enabled him to bear his lot with unbroken
cheerfulness. But the clashing forces of the Universe had roused the
sleeping giant in his brain and whirled his youth away. His only
formulated ambition was to learn first all that schools could teach him,
then lead great armies to battle. Until the day of his death his desire
for military excitement and glory never left him, and at this time it
was the destiny which heated his imagination. It seemed to him that the
roar and rattle of the hurricane, in whose lead he had managed to
maintain himself unharmed, were the loud prophecy of battle and
conquest. At the same time, he knew that other faculties and demands of
his brain must have their way, but he could only guess at their nature,
and statesmanship was the one achievement that did not occur to him; the
American colonies were his only hope, and there was no means by which he
could know their wrongs and needs. Such news came seldom to the West
Indies, and Knox retained little interest in the country where he had
sojourned so short a while. And at this time their struggle hardly would
have appealed to young Hamilton had he known of it. He was British by
instinct and association, and he had never received so much as a
scratch from the little-finger nail of the distant mother, whose long
arm was rigid above he