They certainly made him warm in a very different sense by getting into a rough-and-tumble fight one winter's day with some Marblehead fishermen.

The quarrel was at its height, when suddenly into the brawl rode the commander-in-chief.

He quickly dismounted, seized two of the combatants, shook them, berated them, if tradition may be trusted, for their local jealousies, and so with strong arm quelled the disturbance.

He must have longed to take more than one colonial governor or magnate by the throat and shake him soundly, as he did his soldiers from the woods of Virginia and the rocks of Marblehead, for to his temper there was nothing so satisfying as rapid and decisive action.

But he could not quell governors and assemblies in this way, and yet he managed them and got what he wanted with a patience and tact which it must have been in the last degree trying to him to practice, gifted as he was with a nature at once masterful and passionate.
Another trial was brought about by his securing and sending out privateers which did good service.