Although it was not an affair of the sea, strictly speaking, it is worth recalling here that within six months after this Commission of Inquiry had failed to learn the names of the men, disguised as Indians, who had burned the _Gaspé_, another party of men in another colony disguised themselves as Indians, and helped amazingly in making the history of the times. It was on the night of Friday, the 17th of December, 1773, as the reader will remember. The ship _Dartmouth_, laden with tea, was lying at her wharf in Boston. She had been lying there since the 28th of the preceding month, and during all those days the people of Boston had labored unceasingly to get her away to sea without discharging her cargo. It is even recorded that “the urgency of the business in hand overcame the sabbatarian scruples of the people,” and that in Boston! Meetings too great for “the Cradle of Liberty” (Faneuil Hall) were adjourned to the Old South Meeting-House. The people were “determined not to act (in offense) until the last legal method of relief should have been tried and found wanting.” But at last, on the night of this 17th day of December, as the great throng of more than seven thousand people waited in and about “the church that was dimly lighted with candles,” a messenger arrived from the British Governor to say that the last legal resource had failed. The Governor had refused to allow the ship to go. And “then, amid profound stillness, Samuel Adams arose and said, quietly but distinctly, ‘this meeting can do nothing more to save the country.’” A war-whoop was heard a moment later without the church, and fifty men, disguised as Indians, just as Captain Whipple’s men were when they fired the _Gaspé_--disguised as Indians because Captain Whipple’s men had successfully eluded the British detectives--these fifty citizens of Boston ran away to the wharf where the _Dartmouth_ lay. One John Rowe had asked during the meeting earlier in the evening, “Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?” He had now his opportunity to learn, for when the Indians reached the ship they quickly brought her cargo on deck, and smashing open the chests with hatchets, tumbled the tea over the rail, while a vast host stood by in the moonlight and silently watched the work. There was a significance in the silence of the work that might have been, but was not, heeded by those in authority, for it portrayed the feelings and the character of the men engaged in it, and foreshadowed the grim determination of the people during the conflict that was fast coming on. [Illustration: The “Boston Tea-Party.” _From an old engraving._]